The staff and teenagers at a wilderness boot camp for problem teens are attacked by a vicious bio-mechanical alien. With nobody nearby to help them, they are forced to fight back on their own.
The poster artist doesn’t seem to know the movie is set in a desert…
This is a just-about-okay flick that is better than the stuff produced by the Asylum, for instance (which I know isn’t saying much!)
Desert boot camp
Directed by Greg Kiefer, THIRST features almost-okay (or at least acceptable) CGI, but some of the cliched characters get pretty irritating, which affects the potential watchability and enjoyment of the movie – and I think it would have been better if the alien’s origin had been gone into.
Critter alert!
If you fancy watching a bunch of one dimensional protagonists getting bumped off by a CGI critter that looks its best in the night scenes (but is featured in a lot of bright daylight scenes) this could well be the cliche-ridden flick for you!
The monster attacks!
The poster always makes the film look better, right?
Creature concept design by Mauricio Ruiz…
Shame the creature in the movie wasn’t as cool as this original design
Count Dracula (Frank Langella) arrives in Whitby on the doomed ship Demeter that runs aground during a stormy night. He is discovered by Mina Van Helsing (Jan Francis), who is visiting her friend Lucy Seward (Kate Nelligan). The suave Count visits Mina and her friends at the Seward’s mansion that is also the local asylum.
Dracula starts preying on the women, turning Mina into a ghastly vampire and offering Lucy eternal, undead life as his bride. Jonathan Harker (Trevor Eve), Lucy’s fiancé, joins forces with Mina’s father, Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Laurence Olivier), to combat the charming-but-deadly Count.
Poster
Just like Universal’s 1931 production of DRACULA, that starred Bela Lugosi, the screenplay for this version of the Bram Stoker story was based on the 1924 stage adaptation by Hamilton Deane and John L Balderston. Langella starred in the Broadway play and had been nominated for a Tony Award for his performance. (This version of the tale also changed characters and names around too).
A sailor has his throat ripped out
I think this is a very satisfying, enjoyable, Edwardian period-set vampire movie.
I know some horror fans avoid this version because it’s a ‘romantic’ take on the story, but it is a great-looking production that boasts a fine score by John Williams, a memorable central performance by Frank Langella and a good supporting cast, including Donald Pleasence and Tony Haygarth, who is great as Renfield.
Frank as Drac!
Lucy fears the crossCreepy undead Mina!
With a screenplay by W. D (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS) Richter, the film has a bunch of well-done horror moments directed by John Badham, such as the underground encounter with a very ghoulish-looking undead Mina, Dracula twisting Renfield’s head 180° to break his neck and the Count crawling vertically down walls in slow motion.
Wonderful stuff.
Oh, and I like the love sequence between Dracula and Lucy (which many people knock), that uses the sumptuous John Williams score really effectively… and features laser effects!
Okay, the love scene does go a bit ‘James Bond title sequence’, but that’s probably because Maurice Binder was Visual Consultant on this movie…
A beautiful matte shot by Albert Whitlock
Laurence Olivier as Van Helsing
View from a spider’s web
About the colour timing… In 1991 John Badham (who had originally wanted to shoot the film in black and white) tweaked the colour timing for home video with a desaturated look. This remains the most widely available version (it’s the version available on Amazon Prime, for instance).
Desaturated version
Theatrical version
For their 2-Disc Blu-ray Collector’s Edition, Scream Factory included the desaturated version plus the original version that screened in theatres (which I saw and enjoyed so much).
David Rutherford (Michael Moriarty) is hired by several dessert manufacturers to find out about a new product called The Stuff that is ruining their businesses.
UK art by Graham Humphreys
Rutherford discovers that The Stuff is actually a living, parasitic, blob-like organism that seeps up out of the ground and is being packaged as a new fast food… that gradually takes over the brains of users, turning them into hollowed-out, zombie-like beings.
A dog barfs-up The Stuff!
When white goo attacks!
Larry Cohen’s low budget yarn about a sentient dessert that sets out to take over mankind is a fun 80s B-movie romp featuring a bunch of rough & ready & enjoyable practical effects scenes (animatronics, miniatures, etc), some satire on fast food culture (colourful logos & catchy jingles sell The Stuff to consumers) and a likeable performance from Michael Moriarty, who was also good in Cohen’s god-monster movie Q (1982).
The Stuff leaves users all hollow inside
Some fun 80s animatronics
The film has hints of INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS in its DNA, plus a bit of INVADERS FROM MARS (a child character’s family is taken over and no one believes anything the kid says), and also, of course, it has visual influences from THE BLOB.
Yummy!
“Are you eating it or is it eating you?”
Warning!
A torrent of The Stuff!
Ultimately, THE STUFF features some good sequences and has fun with the overall premise, though Larry Cohen isn’t able to make his monster, which basically resembles yogurt with an IQ, very scary!
Youthful hero Ilias (Andrea Occhipinti) goes on a quest, helped by a tough outlaw named Mace (Jorge Rivero), in a land terrorised by warriors following the orders of villainess Ocron (Sabrina Siani).
Lucio (ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS) Fulci’s foray into the sword and sorcery genre, hazily lensed with filters and fog that constantly softens the image, boasts his trademark gore moments, 80s Italian synth score and a madcap lack of coherence.
He’s got a magic bow!
Mace is caught by, er, cobwebby thingies!
There’s a reason Ocron wears a mask…
Wolf-headed warriors, a magical bow that fires laser arrows, rock-dwelling beings covered in what looks like spider webs, several snakes and a topless, mask-wearing villainess (who is finally revealed to have a hideous ghoul-face) add a lot of colour to this yarn.
Wolf-headed dude!
Another cobweb-covered thingy!
Fulci’s sadistic side comes to the fore with a woman getting split in two, bloody head-bashings, a wolf-headed warrior being roasted slowly on a red-hot boulder and lots of close-ups of festering pustules that start to cover a character’s body.
Bloody scalpingRoasted wolf warrior
Well-shot footage of sunsets and landscapes, some crude special effects (a deluge of darts fired from foliage seems to have been created by simply scratching lines on the film stock) and odd moments like the part where the hero is saved by dolphins (!) make this a diverting, cheap, cheesy hodgepodge of scenes in search of a plot.
Deadly dart attack… or are they just scratches on the film?! Ocron talks to the wolf warrior leaderThis is what Ocron really looks like!This is gonna hurt…
CONQUEST is certainly no classic. It is rather plodding at times, but this dreamy, dirgy, disjointed fantasy flick has its moments. I especially liked the scene featuring the fight with swamp-dwelling zombies and there’s also a surprising demise of a main character.
Isaac (Ludovic Hughes) and his pregnant wife Emma (Sophie Stevens) visit a Norwegian village to sell the house that he has recently inherited. The couple soon discover that Isaac’s father was murdered many years ago and they also find out that the locals follow an old tradition that worships a tentacled deity.
A tentacle rises…The cult goes out paddling
SACRIFICE is a British-made Scandi-folk horror film in which tentacled toys and artwork appear in local shops, homes and Isaac’s childhood bedroom, which gets you hoping that you will eventually get to see this Lovecraftian god-monster, but this isn’t the case, unfortunately, and there are just a couple of shots of tentacles that feature in Emma’s nightmares.
An artwork depicting The Slumbering One: we needed to see this monster in the movie!
Tentacles in a dream sequenceIsaac stares at something horrific (that we never get to see)!
With Barbara Crampton as the local policewoman/cult leader, WICKER MAN-style locals, robed figures with burning torches, references to The Slumbering One and various dream sequences, the film attempts to be a Lovecraft-style horror yarn, but mainly fails. This is because the dialogue and acting lacks subtlety, the plot is rather aimless and the makers are unable to properly convey the feeling of cosmic dread needed for such a story.
Tough criminal boss Alexander Ward (Frank Wolff) oversees a small heist team intent on stealing gold bars from a bank vault in snowy South Dakota. The plan involves one of the criminals, Marty Jones (Richard Sinatra – cousin of Frank Sinatra), setting off an explosion in a nearby gold mine to act as a diversion as the bank is robbed. The mine is the home of a spider-like monster, however, which pursues Ward’s crew as they head for a remote cabin, led by local guide Gil Jackson (Michael Forest), who is, at first, unaware that he’s helping criminals fleeing the scene of their crime. Gil finds himself falling for Ward’s lover Gypsy (Sheila Noonan), who tells him that the gang intends to kill him…
Ward and Gypsy before the heist
BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE was the directorial debut of Monte (TWO-LANE BLACKTOP) Hellman and is an interesting hybrid of heist flick and monster movie. With tough dialogue and heist plot setup, this low budget film is initially like something you’d read in a pulpy crime paperback, but a cobwebby creature is added to the mix, making this a novel Corman-produced curio.
The film was originally released with THE WASP WOMAN
The lack of budget is obvious when it comes to the creature, which is mainly represented as a long prop arm poked on-screen and a couple of quick shots where it is inserted into location scenes via double exposure (which makes you think it might be a spirit of some kind because it is see-through). The monster is definitely meant to be a physical creature, though, and there’s a decent finale where the various characters encounter the beast in a remote cave.
Hairy-faced beast!
The creature keeps its victims webbed-up and alive, so that it can take its time feeding on them, which I think is quite a creepy concept for a 50s B-movie. In one effective moment we see the creature’s first victim covered in a cocoon of web, stuck between two trees, and we realise that the monster has pursued the group into the mountains and has brought the initial victim along with it (as an on-the-go snack!)
Cocooned amongst the trees…
Characters are webbed-up
Though the funky-looking, furry-faced, long-armed critter is very lo-fi, I still rather like this cheaply-made creature feature.
You always need some hanging effigies in a folk horror movie, right?
Nicky (Beth Park) and Jason (Robert Vernon) travel to a village in mist-shrouded woodland (you actually never see much of a village, just a couple of buildings) to claim ownership of an old pub that Nicky has inherited.
Backlit woods
Bird skullHanging effigies
The thing is, Nicky and Jason are scam artists and have no real claim to the pub, but they eventually discover that they, themselves, have been scammed by some of the villagers… who are not what they seem.
‘The demon awakes’
A naughty villager
THE VILLAGE IN THE WOODS is pretty slow burn, some of the acting is a little stilted, but the central idea, once it is revealed, is quite interesting: the villagers are actually satyr-type beings (who usually look like normal, old-ish folks) who need to impregnate a normal human every hundred years or so to enable them to continue their long lifespans. Basically, they need to get a human female to give birth to a hybrid baby which they will then eat and drink its blood that will allow them to remain immortal.
A satyr walks in the woods……looking for a human woman……and all this happens in a dream/flashback
This 82 minute long movie doesn’t make the most of its premise, unfortunately, which is a shame as it could’ve been an interesting horror tale if handled and told differently. Using hanging pagan effigies, bonfires and bird skulls just isn’t enough to make this film as interesting as effective folk horror flicks like THE RITUAL, MIDSOMMAR or THE WICKER MAN.
Nicky awaits the satyrYikes! The villagers are satyrs!
Captain Tony Cellini (Gianni Garko) suffers from a nightmare linked to his dreadful encounter with a monster that occurred years previously: an encounter that pretty much nobody else believes actually happened. Commander Koenig (Martin Landau), leader of Moonbase Alpha, is one of the few people to think there could be some truth behind Cellini’s claims, and he is proven right when they enter a ‘spaceship graveyard’ zone where the cyclopean horror awaits…
Helena Russell (Barbara Bain) thinks Cellini is delusional, but Koenig believes there is truth in Cellini’s claims
A graveyard of derelict ships
The plot for DRAGON’S DOMAIN is interestingly structured: it begins on Moonbase Alpha as it passes through a desolate part of the galaxy, then, once Tony Cellini has his nightmare-induced ‘breakdown’, the story jumps back to the ill-fated Ultra Probe mission, where we witness three crew members being devoured by a tentacled creature. After scenes showing Cellini, the only survivor of the mission, being treated as, at best, delusional, the tale cuts back to the present, with Cellini, Koenig and others coming face to face with the space beast that has somehow brought the mass of derelict space vessels into this area of space.
Professor Juliet Mackie, Doctor Darwin King and Doctor Monique Bouchere should not open the airlock…Too late! They’ve opened the airlock!
This was the 8th episode from the first season of Gerry Anderson’s SPACE: 1999. It was written by Christopher (THE TRIPODS) Penfold and directed by Charles (A FISH CALLED WANDA) Crichton. DRAGON’S DOMAIN really stands out because, for a 1970s family show, this episode is pretty horrific!
Tentacle attack!Cellini is unable to save the rest of the Probe crew members
The standout moment is the flashback sequence where the Ultra Probe crew is attacked and killed by the creature. The tentacled, Lovecraftian monster materialises after swirling lights, noise and wind enters the Probe’s airlock. The screaming thing’s single, glowing eye mesmerises its victims, compelling them to willingly allow the writhing tentacles to grab them. They are then pulled into the slot-like orifice/mouth of the creature, which immediately digests them and their desiccated corpses are unceremoniously spat out onto the floor!
Sucked-dry corpse!
Seeing Doctor Darwin King (Michael Sheard), Doctor Monique Bouchere (Barbara Kellerman) and Professor Juliet Mackie (Susan Jameson) systematically hypnotised and then consumed by the beast certainly sticks in the mind, especially if you saw this as a youngster!
Glowing-eyed beastie!
This is where the monster pulls you inside to be consumed!
The monster, which cannot be detected by life sensors, finally meets its match during the finale when Cellini, and then Koenig, attack it with an axe and a knife. With its hypnotic eye chopped-up by Koenig, the creature dematerialises… but can such a monstrosity truly die?
Koenig picks up an axe!
The episode’s title, and dialogue at the end of the story, suggests the plot is a retelling of the George and the Dragon myth, but it is more akin to Moby Dick, with the obsessed Tony Cellini acting like Captain Ahab: a man totally focused on getting revenge on the monster he has faced before.
This 32-page one-shot comic special, written by Alec Worley and drawn by DaNi, features the return of Black Beth, a female warrior originally developed in the early 1970s by Spanish artist Blas Gallego (and an unknown writer).
A quick lowdown on Black Beth… The original Black Beth story was going to appear in a comic that unfortunately never went ahead, so the first tale eventually went to print in the pages of Scream! Holiday Special in 1988 (Scream! was a British weekly horror anthology comic aimed at younger readers). Black Beth then appeared many years later in a couple more tales, now written by Alec (2000 AD) Worley and drawn by DaNi. These two stories were featured in the Scream! & Misty Halloween Special in 2018 and the Misty & Scream! Special in 2020.
Beth confronts a rock-creature on the beach of the Isle of Phantoms…
Black Beth and The Devils of Al-Kadesh is the latest Black Beth yarn, which has the swordswoman and her blind companion Quido venture to the city of Al-Kadesh, on a mission to prevent the place from being destroyed by a dead (but not actually dead) witch called Anis-Amuun. But just who is it that really wants to wipe out this wicked city that is also known as ‘Hell’s Cauldron’?
Can Beth trust the Templars?
Andrea Bulgarelli’s wonderful cover art
The sword and sorcery story is pretty no-nonsense and moves along in a pacy manner, with Beth encountering the Templars of the Cleansing Dawn and fighting pincered Tritons, which we are told are carrion-eaters from the sea bottom. There’s also a large, four-eyed spectral owl that is the familiar of Seer Estevan, a pterosaur-like creature that is ridden at one point by Beth, and a couple of sorcery-created rock-beings.
Eek! Tritons with spiky carapaces!
Beth astride the pterosaur-beast
The main pleasure to the found with this comic, however, is DaNi’s artwork. It is colourful, comprised of masses of scratchy ink lines and has a real Euro-comics vibe to it (DaNi is Greek, born in Athens). Her art style here edges towards the abstract sometimes, giving the impression she did some of the line-work super-fast, then overlaying it all with luscious colours: pinks, greens, blues and mauves. And she’s also not scared to leave some areas of the page white. The panel and page layouts are a pleasure to the eyes. (DaNi scanned different watercolour brush strokes she made so she could work on the colours on her own digitally, adding them to her inks, which were drawn traditionally and then scanned).
A spectral owl – with four eyes!
In addition to the lead 32-page story, this publication has back-up stories by Alec Worley, Andrea Bulgarelli, Doug Graves and Vincenzo Riccardi, pin-ups by David Roach and Andreas Butzbach, plus an awesome cover by Andrea Bulgarelli.
I love the scribbly detail and lush colours in each panel
Ad for the comic
PROCESS SHOTS FOR THE CREATION OF THE AWESOME COVER…
Talented artist Andrea Bulgarelli did an amazing job with the cover for the Black Beth comic, so let’s have a look at how that stunning illustration came into being…
Pencilled version
The painting begins…
The acrylic on canvas paper painting continues: as you can see – the artist decides to make the sky dark red
The painting is finessed, with time spent adding detail to the armour
The finished, gorgeous cover, ready for printing!
Here’s a shot showing Andrea’s workspace…
All the above process shots came originally from an online 2000AD feature by bloggers Richard Bruton and Pete Wells
A gas attack of unknown origin wipes out most of the population of Earth. A group of survivors (who all lived through the gas strike because they were in air-tight rooms, etc) gather together and base themselves in an English village hotel/pub.
Poster
The group, led by American test pilot Jeff Nolan (Willard Parker), soon discover that the gas attack was a prelude to some kind of invasion… because they now spot silver-suited robots plodding around the village! These automatons can kill humans with a touch of their hands and then, it is revealed later… these victims come back to life as white-eyed zombies!
Blank-eyed victims return from the dead!Robot and zombie slave!
Vanda Godsell gets zombiefied!
The protagonists move between the village and a Territorial Army drill hall, dodge stalking robots and zombies, and then Jeff finally formulates a plan that involves blowing up a local radio mast that’s being used to send signals to the robots…
First of all, I must say that THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING is a great name for a movie! Just how awesome is that title?! Okay, the movie doesn’t live up to the promise of this title (the Earth dies pretty much silently thanks to the gas attack), but the film does have some tense scenes that are well-handled by director Terence Fisher.
THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING has a brief running time, is low budget, has a doomy, subdued, dour atmosphere and is a ‘Middle England apocalypse’-type scenario reminiscent of a John Wyndham story. I always find these set-ups quite interesting, as scenes of dead bodies littering quaint village streets and robots clomping past homely pubs make for quite interesting visuals.
Dead bodies in the home counties…
The lo-fi robots have a Cybermen vibe to them, though they predate the DOCTOR WHO villains by two years. These mechanical menaces (they’re basically guys in silver spacesuits) move unhurriedly, as do their zombie human servants, and I think this adds anxiety to the scenes because you know the protagonists SHOULD be able to outrun the robots but you also KNOW these clunky dudes will still somehow creep up on them.
They may look a bit like Cybermen but these robots came first!
There’s an effectively directed sequence where Peggy (Virginia Field) escapes from unreliable cad Quinn (played by Dennis Price, who always played cads) and finds herself pursued by slow moving robots & zombies. There’s a similarly tense moment at the end of the movie when some robots and a now-zombiefied Quinn menacingly approach Lorna (Anna Palk) and her newborn baby.
Quinn returns as a zombie working for the robots
Though the movie ends rather abruptly, with the destruction of a single alien-commandeered radio mast conveniently putting all the robots in the area out of action, THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING is an interesting watch and its depiction of people coming back from the dead as zombies means that it can be viewed as a precursor to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968).
Terence Fisher must have acquired a taste for making small-groups-of-Brits-threatened-by-aliens/monsters movies because he went on to shoot ISLAND OF TERROR (1966) and NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT, aka ISLAND OF THE BURNING DAMNED (1967) soon afterwards.
The robots close-in…
Pressbook
The movie’s no classic, with the characters lacking any real goal until the decision to destroy the mast is suggested late in the plot, but this B&W horror-sci-fi tale is worth a watch.
Devoted to every kind of movie and TV monster, from King Kong to Godzilla, from the Blob to Alien. Plus monsters from other media too, including books and comics.
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