Shameless Self Expression

Peter Cushing plays a well-respected surgeon with a hot young model fiancé (Sue Lloyd). Said hot young fiancé has a close encounter with a hot photography lamp during a scuffle between Cushing and the pants-man photographer (Anthony Booth). She suffers severe burns and a great deal of accompanying physical pain and scarring as a result. Wracked with guilt, sorrow and anguish, Cushing toils away trying to come up with a method of restoring his beloved’s youthful, gorgeous skin. Eventually he does indeed devise a new method, but it’s one involving a laser device and the pituitary glands of the recently dead. Kate O’Mara plays Lloyd’s loving sister, and Noel Trevarthen plays a professional colleague of Cushing’s. Wendy Varnals turns up as a young girl Cushing and Lloyd meet at the beach, whose acquaintances include Billy Murray (not the American comedic actor Bill Murray) and a hulking David Lodge.   Although it’s not at all the sleazy, “Frenzy” -esque killer-thriller I’d been expecti

Single mum Juliette Lewis and her teen daughter Diana Silvers move back to Lewis’ hometown, where she’s got a casino waitress gig. Silvers makes fast friends with a bunch of local kids, who one day are looking for someone of age to buy booze for them. They happen upon veterinary assistant Sue Ann (Octavia Spencer), who happily buys the alcohol and insists they call her ‘Ma’. She even tells them to come on over to her place to drink and party down in her basement. Being morons, the kids think this is a great idea after a mere miniscule amount of hesitation. Pretty soon they’re partying down at Ma’s on a regular basis. Ma even cuts a rug down in the basement herself from time to time. However, Ma starts to come across as pushy and needy, and turns the kids off. However, Ma doesn’t take kindly to rejection. She also has issues related to her own stint at high school as an outcast. Luke Evans plays the former school hunk still in town, whom Lewis has always had the hots for. Allison Janney

On the advice of history professor Christopher Lee, student Venetia Stevenson travels to Whitewood, Massachusetts to research a local witch burned at the stake many years ago. Once there, she discovers that the town’s cursed legacy and sinister goings on might not exactly be restricted to just the past. Patricia Jessel is the ominous landlady of the hotel Stevenson stays at, whilst Betta St. John is a more genial local bookstore employee, and deep-voiced Valentine Dyall is another Whitewood local.   Also known as “Horror Hotel” , this creepy, atmospheric flick from director John Llewellyn Moxey (whose resumé is otherwise mostly filled with a lot of TV work) is pretty much the film I expected the overrated and dull “Carnival of Souls” to be. It could’ve even been a near-great film, if not for the cheapo jazz score by Douglas Gamley (Amicus’ go-to composer with scores for “Asylum” , “From Beyond the Grave” etc.), and a lack of Christopher Lee in more of the film. The latter is obvi

A rich man (Robert Frazer) entices a young couple to come visit him in Haiti with the ulterior motive of stealing the man’s fiancé (Madge Bellamy, terrible). Bela Lugosi plays a man named Murder Legendre (!) who uses voodoo magic to get manual labour work done on his plantation by workers in a trance. You don’t have to be Einstein to see where this is going.   One of the earliest zombie movies, this 1932 film from director Victor Halperin ( “Revolt of the Zombies” , “Torture Ship” ) is a mostly tedious C-grade affair despite its reputation. The zombies are interesting, Bela Lugosi makes up for a lack of acting talent with sheer unique presence, and his character itself is frankly more interesting than his overrated interpretation of “Dracula” . He’s a real dastardly bastard in this one. Lugosi’s creepy stare is probably the most memorable thing about the film, which of course inspired the name of Rob Zombie’s band who gave us the hit ‘More Human than Human’ (I prefer Zombie’s solo

In the 19 th century, lady Rowena (Elizabeth Shepherd), daughter of Lord Trevanian (Derek Francis) meets gloomy widowed English nobleman Verden Fell (Vincent Price), and despite hardly being the life of the party, she’s utterly fascinated by him. He in turn falls in love, and before long the two are wed. However, after a while Rowena’s new husband appears to be driven mad with the idea that she is in fact inhabited by the spirit of his late, beloved wife Ligeia. Oliver Johnston plays Fell’s manservant, and Richard Vernon plays a doctor.   The best of the Roger Corman cycle of Edgar Allan Poe films (the other highlights being “Fall of the House of Usher” , “The Pit and the Pendulum” , and “The Masque of the Red Death” ), this melancholic 1964 film benefits particularly from superb performances by Vincent Price and Elizabeth Shepherd. In fact, I really wish this film were talked about more, because this is arguably Price’s best-ever performance. Perhaps since this was the last of th