The breeding ground for all your favourite horror monstrosities
Asylum was the third of the Amicus portmanteau films to feature a screenplay from Psycho author Robert Bloch based upon his own short stories and has just been re-released in a rather lovely limited Blu-ray edition in the UK. The linking frame work to Asylum is one of the cleverest of all the Amicus anthology... Continue Reading →
Hoping to take advantage of the new AA certificate that was introduced to UK cinemas in 1970 allowing cinema goers as young a 14 into movies, Amicus producer Milton Subotsky dialed back the gore for his third portmanteau movie The House That Dripped Blood. When it went before the British Board of film Censors disaster... Continue Reading →
Three quid in Fop Edinburgh, how could I resist? Guillermo Del Toro's lusciously photographed Gothic Horror is absolutely lovely to look at, but more of that later. Basically the story concerns American heiress Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) who is hoodwinked into marrying Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddlestone and yes Flowers you do get to see... Continue Reading →
I think the last time I saw The Skull it was it was a late night movie shown after ITV's News at Ten back in about 1974. What's more it was on a tiny a black and white portable telly. It still scared the crap out of me as an impressionable teen, so you can... Continue Reading →
In 2013 the Hothouse joined the actor Peter Cushing as he attempted to resolve a case of child abuse while dealing with his own grief following the death of his beloved wife Helen, in Stephen Volk's novella Whitstable. Having spent a good deal of my early teens on the Kent coast I found Volk's evocation... Continue Reading →
‘The Devil has sent me Twins of Evil!’ So says Peter Cushing’s Gustav Weil, of his nieces Frieda and Maria. Well not quite, because its only one of the pair (played by real life identical twins and Playboy playmates Madeline and Mary Collinson) who is a bit wayward. Sent from Venice to the middle European village of Karnstein on the... Continue Reading →
Jack Bailey really shouldn’t have taken that detour to Hosner Lake after leaving his girlfriend’s house. Oh yes, there is something pretty hostile stirring in them there bushes and when Jack revs up his motorcycle it’s hot on his tail. Despite the Kawasaki’s horsepower something leaps on his back and when Jack regains consciousness he’s in a... Continue Reading →
As a child I remember being allowed to stay up late one Saturday evening way back in the 1960s, when BBC2 had a regular slot for the Midnight Movie, to catch Hammer’s take on the legendary yeti of Tibet. I think it must have been one of my first encounters with Horror or Sci-fi outside... Continue Reading →
A hospital patient with no vital signs but full of life, a job offer for a Death Row prisoner and a mob enforcer who finds religion goes and knocks on the wrong old lady’s door wanting to talk about God. These are just a few of the stories to be found inside Michael Bray’s Dark... Continue Reading →
Edie Grace is the chef at the Tup, the local pub in Ravenglass, a small northern town close to the Sellafield nuclear processing plant. When Edie cuts her finger chopping some veg, little does she suspect that the few drops of blood she sheds at an ancient stone circle will reawaken an ancient malevolence known... Continue Reading →
The Horror Hothouse 