This is definitely an end of an era, with the news of the passing of Sam Sherman. He was mainly known as a producer, one half of Independent International, working with Al Adamson, but his contributions to the horror genre is just massive. From his work with Jim Warren and Famous Monsters of Filmland, to working with Hemisphere Pictures, especially in their promotion department, then moving on to work with Adamson. While he was a very multi-talented man, it is his work in PR is what I loved about him. He knew how to sell a film and came up with some of the most beautiful and crazy advertising. Of course, Sherman was the man responsible for bringing Paul Naschy to the states, picking up the rights and releasing Naschy’s first picture, Mark of the Wolfman, though changing it to Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror, yet again with some really great ad campaign for it! Sure, there’s no Dr. Frankenstein or Frankenstein creature in the film, but we do get a WOLF-STEIN!!!
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Hemisphere Horrors!
Once again, Severin comes through in delivering the goods! After wetting fan’s appetite with the Blood Island box set, now you can experience more that Hemisphere Pictures released back in the late ’60s and early ’70s, all collected together in great little box set. Here are the films you get:
The Blood Drinkers (1964)
Curse of the Vampires (1966)
Brain of Blood (1971)
The Black Cat (1966)
The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967)
While the first 3 titles will be available separately, the last two are only available in the box set, which will retails at $59.99. Not a bad deal when you consider you’re getting 5 features, all been given 2K and 4K scans from vault film elements. These are probably going to look the best they ever have!
I remember back in the early days of me collecting films, trying to find some of these films were tricky because they sometimes would go under several different names. The distributors would change the names and release them over and over again, hoping the public wouldn’t notice that they might have seen this picture already! That is why Curse of the Vampires is also known as both Creatures of Evil and Blood of the Vampires.
