HORROR 101 with Dr. AC

SANTA SANGRE (1989) d. Alejandro Jodorowsky (Mexico/Italy) Visionary filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky cultivates one brilliant sequence after another, employing a staggering use of color shades, sensational aural cues, disturbing themes, and some of the most original onscreen imagery ever laid to celluloid.  Hypnotizing and enticing, repugnant and crude, Santa Sangre is a thoroughly absorbing and un...

THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957) d. Terence Fisher (UK) THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1958) d. Terence Fisher (UK) THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN (1964) d. Freddie Francis (UK) FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN (1967) d. Terence Fisher (UK) FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED (1969) d. Terence Fisher (UK) FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL (1974) d. Terence Fisher (UK) With over 130 film and television credits t...

ALIEN (1979) d. Ridley Scott (USA/UK) ALIENS (1986) d. James Cameron (USA/UK) ALIEN 3 (1992) d. David Fincher (USA) ALIEN: RESURRECTION (1997) d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet (USA) PROMETHEUS (2012) d. Ridley Scott (USA/UK) ALIEN: COVENANT (2019) d. Ridley Scott (USA/UK) When the commercial space vessel Nostromo responds to a distress signal on an unknown planet, one of their crew is attacked by a bizarre l...

THE BLACK CAT (1934) d. Edgar G. Ulmer (USA) Bearing no resemblance to the original story by Edgar Allan Poe, Universal's atmosphere-drenched 1934 offering, The Black Cat, from Austrian expatriate Edgar G. Ulmer, is a superior piece of filmmaking, made all the more historic for marking the first and finest on-screen teaming of horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. The storyline of mysterious...

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978) I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (2010) I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2 (2013) I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE: VENGEANCE IS MINE (2015) I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE: DEJA VU (2019) GROWING UP WITH I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (2019) (documentary) Join AC and his incredible panel of guests Art Ettinger (Ultra Violent Magazine), Adam Rockoff (Going to Pieces, The Horror of It All), and superfan Kate Hansen as they dis...

THE BROOD (1979) d. David Cronenberg (Canada) Canadian writer/director David Cronenberg has become so synonymous with the term "body-horror" that when a project is referred to as being "Cronenbergian," we actually have an idea of what this might mean. Cronenberg has often said that he does not see disease and mutations as good or bad – they simply are – a viewpoint that shows up time and again in...

SHAUN OF THE DEAD (2004) d. Edgar Wright (UK) When Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead, a romantic comedy with zombies (or zom-rom-com, as it was immediately dubbed by pundits) hit theaters in 2004, it instantly earned a place alongside The Return of the Living Dead and Peter Jackson's Braindead (aka Dead-Alive) as one of the best horror/comedies of all time, as well as a winning tale of love and tru...

GODZILLA VS. MEGALON (1973) d. Jun Fukuda (Japan) A far cry from the anti-nuke statement that spawned the large lizard's origins, this entry (#13) serves up twice the monster mashing and half the "plot" of other installments. Throwing caution and physics to the winds, this installment features the underwater race of Seatopians who, ticked off by another round of nuclear testing, unleash the giant...

THE TERMINATOR (1984) d. James Cameron (USA) TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991) d. James Cameron (USA) TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003) d. Jonathan Mostow (USA) TERMINATOR: SALVATION (2009) d. McG (USA) TERMINATOR: GENISYS (2015) d. Alan Taylor (USA) TERMINATOR: DARK FATE (2018) d. Tim Miller (USA) Released in 1984, The Terminator captivated critics and audiences alike with its mind-blowin...

THE BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE (1959) d. Monte Hellman (USA) THE GIANT GILA MONSTER (1959) d. Ray Kellogg (USA) THE KILLER SHREWS (1959) d. Ray Kellogg (USA) The good folks at Film Masters  have taken it upon themselves to rescue oodles of public domain titles, some of which they've even gone through the time and effort to give the stand-up, high-def presentations these orphaned films deserve. Or do...

CASTLE OF BLOOD (1964) d. Antonio Margheriti (as Anthony Dawson) (Italy) THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964) d. Antonio Margheriti (as Anthony Dawson (Italy)  Even if you're a fan of Italian horror cinema, one name that continues to labor for recognition is Antonio Margheriti, in some respects due to the fact that he was often billed by his Anglicized moniker, Anthony M. Dawson. Like his contemporaries,...

CURTAINS (1983) d. Richard Ciupka/Peter Simpson (Canada) PSYCHO II (1983) d. Richard Franklin (USA) Tonight we're jetting back to 1983 to discuss a couple of undersung gems from the heyday of the slasher boom, one a belated sequel to a groundbreaking masterpiece, the other a curious Canadian feature made all the more appealing by its troubled production, release, and subsequent obscurity. In PSYCH...

BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964) d. Mario Bava (Italy) AMER (2009) d. Bruno Forzani / Helene Cattet (Belgium/France)  In 1963, director Mario Bava made The Girl Who Knew Too Much and gave birth to the Italian film genre known as the Giallo. Named after a series of crime paperbacks with yellow covers, the Giallo was boldly contemporary, eschewing the cloaks and capes of Hammer's Gothic melodramas. A yea...

KING KONG (1933) d. Merian C. Cooper / Ernest B. Schoedsack (USA) SON OF KONG (1933) d. Ernest B. Schoedsack (USA) It's almost impossible to overstate the importance the original 1933 King Kong has had on the monster movie genre and on the history of cinema overall. As such, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that there was a time before Kong, and that there were individuals who brought the chara...

PHANTASM (1979) d. Don Coscarelli (USA) PHANTASM II (1989) d. Don Coscarelli (USA) PHANTASM III: LORD OF THE DEAD (1994) d. Don Coscarelli (USA) PHANTASM IV: OBLIVION (1998) d. Don Coscarelli (USA) PHANTASM V: RAVAGER (2016) d. David Hartman (USA)  When Phantasm premiered in early 1979, it was unlike anything horror fans had seen before. It was a coming of age tale that also dealt with death, loss...

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE d. Jack Arnold (1953) (USA) INVADERS FROM MARS d. William Cameron Menzies (1953) (USA)  WAR OF THE WORLDS d. Byron Haskin (1953) (USA) ROBOT MONSTER d. Phil Tucker (1953) (USA) By the closing of the 1940s, it seemed that audiences had grown weary of the classic monsters of yesteryear, and were hungry for new thrills. Those exciting new stories came not from moldy crypts or...

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943) d. Jacques Tourneur (USA) THE LEOPARD MAN (1943) d. Jacques Tourneur (USA) THE SEVENTH VICTIM (1943) d. Mark Robson From 1942 to 1946, when rust was appearing on the Frankenstein Monster's neck bolts, Dracula was growing longer in the tooth, and swaddled, swollen mummies were limping along, both literally and figuratively, a savior appeared on the horror horizon, who...

GHIDORAH THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER (1964) d. Ishiro Honda (Japan) GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA (1974) d. Jun Fukuda (Japan) GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE (1989) d. Kazuki Ōmori (Japan) GODZILLA VS. SPACE GODZILLA (1994) d. Kensho Yamashita (Japan) GODZILLA: FINAL WARS (2004) d. Ryuhei Kitamura (Japan) Ever since the original Gojira debuted in Japan in 1954, followed by 1956's even more successful internatio...

LEPRECHAUN (1993) d. Mark Jones (USA) LEPRECHAUN 2 (1994) d. Rodman Flender (USA) LEPRECHAUN 3 (1995) d. Brian Trenchard-Smith (USA) LEPRECHAUN 4: IN SPACE (1996) d. Brian Trenchard-Smith (USA) LEPRECHAUN 5: IN THE HOOD (2000) d. Rob Spera (USA) LEPRECHAUN 6: BACK TO THA HOOD (2003) d. Steven Ayromlooi (USA) LEPRECHAUN: ORIGINS (2014) d. Zach Lipovski (USA) LEPRECHAUN RETURNS (2018) d. Steven Kost...

EYES OF FIRE (1983) d. Avery Crounse (USA) When celebrated photographer Avery Crounse set out to make his feature film debut, he didn't opt for the simple route of an escaped psycho wielding a butcher knife like so many of his early '80s contemporaries. Eyes of Fire is instead an epic venture into the realm of magical realism, following a pair of families in 1750 on the run from their Puritanical...

AUGUST UNDERGROUND (2001) d. Fred Vogel (USA) AUGUST UNDERGROUND'S MORDUM (2003) d. Fred Vogel (USA) AUGUST UNDERGROUND'S PENANCE (2007) d. Fred Vogel (USA) Inspired by the videotaped home invasion scene from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and the documentary aesthetic of both Man Bites Dog and The Blair Witch Project, makeup artist-turned-writer/director Fred Vogel elected to burrow below the...

CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) d. Jack Arnold (USA) REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (1955) d. Jack Arnold (USA) THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US (1956) d. John Sherwood (USA) One of the best sci-fi/horror efforts of the 1950s and must-see material for any card-carrying genre fan, Creature from the Black Lagoon was the brainchild of producer William Alland who blatantly riffed on King Kong's storyline of...

DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE (aka Cemetery Man) (1994) d. Michele Soavi (Italy) Dellamorte Dellamore (aka Cemetery Man) is arguably the last great Italian horror movie of that country's heyday, and yet somehow still struggles for a place of respect amidst the masters. Originally a novel by Tziano Sclavi, and later adapted by Gianni Romoli and directed by Argento protege Michele Soavi, the story follows Bu...

THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953) d. Eugene Lourie (USA) GODZILLA (1998) d. Roland Emmerich (USA) CLOVERFIELD (2008) d. Matt Reeves (USA) Ever since King Kong tore up the town in 1933, New York City has played host to a number of giant monsters stomping their way down 5th Avenue and giving colossal headaches to insurance companies. Tonight, we'll be paying homage to a trio of cinematic goliaths...

MESSIAH OF EVIL (1974) d. Willard Huyck (USA) Clearly inspired by Night of the Living Dead and possessing the dreamlike, doom-laden tone of Let's Scare Jessica to Death, 1974's Messiah of Evil is a thoughtful, introspective, original and regrettably neglected low-budget horror effort. Directed by Willard Huyck and co-written with Gloria Katz (later the screenwriters for American Graffiti and India...