Even before it became a critical and commercial success on its original 3-D theatrical run, The Creature From The Black Lagoon was being groomed as the first (and only) Universal genre franchise in the wake of the monster-neutering Abbot and Costello cycle.
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” – Edgar Allan Poe
A whole horde of horror film magazines have come and gone over the years but few manage to achieve the iconic stamp of approval from discerning genre aficionados.
After three successful Dracula features, Hammer bring back everyone’s favourite blood-lusting vampire for a fourth instalment in Dracula Has Risen From The Grave (1968).
Suddenly I was confronted by a huge colour photo of Christopher Lee as Dracula, red eyes blazing, staring out at me from the cover of a new poster magazine. Since it was marked “For Adults Only”…
“They don’t make them like that anymore” is something you often hear said. And as far as horror films go I think that’s true. The great days of the atmospheric horror movies ended, in my opinion, in the 1970s.
But surely a contender for worst ever has to be the mutant jellyfish /man creature (were-jelly?) from The Sting of Death. If you haven’t experienced the doubtful pleasure of this film do yourself a favour and track it down now!
The Thing From Another World is one of those handful of films I was exposed to at a tender age on late night TV. Along with Karloff’s Frankenstein, Them! and Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, to this day it still excites me to watch it and it takes me back to being an 11 year full of wonder at the images coming from our black and white TV!
Imagine a 7 year old boy addicted to watching Dr Who every Saturday teatime in the 60s. The Daleks, of course, were the really scary ones, the ones you hid behind the sofa to avoid. But for me, as a child, the ones that terrified me most were the yetis, specifically the ones that appeared in 1968’s Web of Fear.
Picture the scene: It’s a Friday morning sometime in the early 70s and I’m sat in school trying my hardest to look interested in a geography lesson. But it’s not ox-bow lakes and waterfalls that are on my young mind. All I can think of is the film that’s advertised on Tyne Tees TV at 10.30pm that night.