Swamp Gothic: The Alligator People (1959)
What do you get when you cross a Gothic Romance with Creature From the Black Lagoon? Twentieth Century Fox’s 1959 B Movie classic, The Alligator People, though it tries hard to be an A List picture....
View ArticlePsychological Gothic: Blood Secrets
They just don’t write them like this anymore: horror with nothing supernatural in it; lean, mean literary prose that is never pretentious and never bogs down in “style”; a taut narrative that...
View ArticleDracula Deconstructed: Dracula (Masterpiece Theatre 2006)
Every few years, our favorite literary and cinematic icons pop up in new film incarnations, be it Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, or my personal favorite, Count Dracula. (Well, I am a huge Sherlock...
View ArticleDumber of the Beast: The Mephisto Waltz by Fred Mustard Stewart
Here’s another “classic” piece of late 60s quasi-Satanic hooey, Fred Mustard Stewart’s debut novel, The Mephisto Waltz. Just look at the reviews on the cover of the 1970 Signet paperback: A gripping...
View ArticleSpooky Time: The Haunting at Blackwood Hall
Need an old fashioned Gothic thriller to generate some Halloween spirit? The Haunting at Blackwood Hall is now in paperback, 9.95 USD available at Amazon and Amazon UK. E-Book also available from...
View ArticleVampire Season - The Brides of Dracula (1960)
After an unrelentingly hot US summer that took its toll on this fair skinned red-head physically and psychologically (I am more acclimated to cold, dark places after all), Autumn kicked in full bore...
View ArticleVampire Season - Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
1963 found both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing unavailable for filming, so Hammer forged ahead on the next Dracula project. Sans the Count and Van Helsing, the script went through several rewrites,...
View ArticleGothic Halloween Triple Feature: Free
This week only, download all three of my Gothic novellas in eBook form for free. These titles are available in Kindle format only, but are easy to read using the free Kindle For PC Reader or the free...
View ArticleSon of the Beast: Rosemary's Baby
Since the beginning of cinema as a universally shared human interest some one hundred years ago, readers who also love movies and movie fans who must read the book on which a movie is based have...
View ArticleVampire Season: House of Dark Shadows
You know you really love a movie when you can watch it a thousand times and still find something new to appreciate. The VHS copy of House of Dark Shadows sits on the shelf next to about one year's...
View ArticleAll in the Family: Night of Dark Shadows
After the slaughter of the Collins family as we know it at the hands of the cousin from England, Collinwood is inherited by Quentin Collins – no, not the Quentin Collins who suffered the curse of the...
View ArticleWhen It Rains It Pours: Dark Water (2005)
From the opening shot of the 2005 ghost story, Dark Water, we know we are in for a wet ride - so wet that I wonder why the filmmakers didn’t just go ahead and set it in Seattle. But the Roosevelt...
View ArticleSéance (2001)
As much as I enjoy J Horror I don’t want to stray too far from the subject of The Midnight Room. With Séance, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 television film based on the Mark McShane novel, Séance on a Wet...
View ArticleThe Life and Loves of Alfred Hitchock
When I was a kid racing home from school to watch Dark Shadows and staying up late on Saturday night to watch Shock it to Me and Scream In, our local sci-fi/horror double feature in glorious black and...
View ArticleBack to Basics: The Changeling (1980)
Time slips away too quickly lately. Holiday socializing rears its attractive head. I have a number of writing projects all demanding my attention simultaneously. And with good intentions, I have a...
View ArticleThe Others (2001)
Hot on the heels of a 1999 blockbuster horror film with a phenomenal twist ending, Alejandro Amenabar’s outstanding 2001 contribution to the pantheon of ghost stories, The Others, sent audiences home...
View ArticleHappy Birthday Edgar Allan Poe: Castle of Blood (1962)
About twenty years ago I stumbled on a video company called Sinister Cinema which specialized in public domain films of every exploitation genre imaginable: old movie serials, juvenile delinquent,...
View ArticleTwo Birds With One Stone: Whip and the Body (1963)
Bridging my mini-series on ghosts at the movies with a mini-series on Italian Gothic Cinema comes Mario Bava's bizarre bit of S&M Gothic, Whip and the Body. Barbara Steele turned down the role of...
View ArticleSpaghetti Gothic 101: Nightmare Castle
Not my favorite Barbara Steele movie (that would be The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, coming to The Midnight Room next week), but any way you slice it Nightmare Castle packs an awful lot of bang for your...
View ArticleI Heart the Dead: The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962)
When fans and scholars of classic 60s horror films mention the Italian Gothic strain, two names invariably surface: Mario Bava, the director who spearheaded the Italian movement with the 1960 film,...
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