1970s
Plot: what horrors lurk on the fog-enshrouded rocks of Snape Island? Tower Of Evil (or Horror On Snape Island as it was originally called and Beyond the Fog when it was reissued in 1980) is one of those little British horror ditties that oozes with atmosphere. It might not exactly
1970s
Plot: American actress inherits time-worn castle in Transylvania. Gebissen wird nur nachts - das Happening der Vampire (or Biting is Only Done at Night - the Happening of the Vampires, released in Italy as ½ Litro di Rosso per il Conto Dracula or ½ Liter of Red For Count Dracula and abbreviated
1970s
Plot: laborer falls in love with a beautiful girl who might, or might not, be human. In the hallowed year of 1973 - a banner year for gothic, erotic, and vampire horror, if there ever was one – the European vampire film hit its apex. France, Spain, and Italy churned out
1970s
Plot: photojournalist and writer explore Cantabrian mountains and find witches. The Witches Mountain (released back at home as El monte de la Brujas, for once released on the foreign market under its native title and not unnecessarily saddled with half a dozen alternative titles) is a wonderfully overlooked curio that
1970s
Plot: Eva, a snake dancer, is hired to perform at a gentlemen’s club in Hong Kong. There always has been a thin line and a degree of overlap between horror and erotica. Nowhere was that line more blurred and the distinction more nebulous than in continental Europe in the
1970s
Plot: forty-something and two feisty twenty-year-olds roadtrip around rural France. The first few directorial features from Joël Séria have an autobiographical slant. His debut Don’t Deliver Us From Evil (1971) was an irreverent coming of age tale loosely based on the 1954 Parker–Hulme murder case in Christchurch, New
1970s
Plot: two sisters inherit a mansion and convert it into a pension. Hilarity ensues! In the post-La Liceale (1975) years things weren’t always easy for Gloria Guida. No doubt la Guida had the luxury of picking the roles she was interested in but the general quality of the sex
1970s
Plot: two teen girls, one hot summer, a lifetime of blasphemy and heresy. It was really Jean Rollin who paved the way for the French fantastique. Not by some grand design or clever promotion but rather the accident of circumstance. When The Rape of the Vampire (1968) hit cineplexes across
1970s
Plot: businessman gets lost in the Yugoslavian wilds and encounters vampires. The Night Of the Devils (or La notte dei diavoli back at home in Italy) is a minor entry in the continental European vampire horror canon at the dawn of the wicked and wild seventies. The basis for the
1970s
Plot: primeval colossus wreaks havoc upon metropolitan Toronto… When Dino de Laurentiis released his 1976 remake of King Kong (1933) its impact was profound and immediate. England has responded to Japan’s allegory for certain nuclear annihilation Godzilla (1954) with its own amiable big monster epic in the form of
1970s
Plot: dopey industrialist must procure a male heir and hires a maid. Hilarity ensues! The Mammon Cat (or Il Gatto Mammone, released in Spain as the more descriptive El Impotente Seductor, which basically spoils the entire plot) was released during the marquee year that was 1975, probably the busiest year
1970s
Plot: who are the three on a meathook and who killed them? The 1957 case of Ed Gein, the Butcher of Plainfield or the night ghoul of the graveyards, continued (and continues) to fascinate. In 1959 American novelist Robert Bloch wrote Psycho which formed the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s