Reviews

There are a number of misconceptions about this film floating around this website, so first to set a few things straight.

Peter Bark, the midget who played ten-year-old Michael, was born in 1955. That would have made him about 25 years old when this movie was filmed -- not 30 or 35 or 40 as some have said. He definitely was NOT older than Mariangela Giordano, the actress playing his mother, who was born in 1937. According to an interview with one of the people involved in the film, Italian labor laws at the time were very strict about what kind of films children could appear in, and Burial Ground was definitely not one of them.

There were numerous complaints about the poor quality of the videotape, which made it nearly impossible to see what was going on in the night scenes. Having recently viewed a trailer for this film online, I understand this complaint. For viewers who enjoyed the movie but were disappointed by the technical quality of the images, I would recommend the DVD version that I watched, which is part of Shriek Show's "Zombie Pack 2." I guarantee you'll see everything.

As for the movie itself, I agree with the majority of the reviews I have read thus far. There is very little plot or character development, the acting ranges from poor to mediocre, the Zombie makeup and effects range from cool to laughable, and the plot has as many holes as a slice of Swiss cheese. For example, at the beginning of the movie we see the characters driving up to the castle in three cars. Nothing seems to happen to the cars, so why don't they just run out of the castle and drive away? What the for-goodness-sake is a BEAR TRAP doing in the castle garden? Four of the characters who are murdered by zombies are alone when they're killed; why don't they stick together? When Leslie disappears, her husband doesn't even seem to know she's missing till he discovers her body much later.

Despite these numerous flaws, the movies has two things going in its favor that, in my opinion, justify my fairly high rating: (1) non-stop zombie action and lots of gory effects; and (2) Peter Bark. There are numerous other low-budget zombie movies that are partially redeemed by the first factor, but this is the ONLY zombie movie that has Peter Bark in it. And even before he turns into a zombie at the end of the movie, Peter Bark is one hell of a creepy fellow. He steals every scene he is in, and his creepiness gives the entire film a creepy ambiance that makes this movie quite unique in the zombie genre. The English-language version adds to the enjoyment of watching this adult pretend to be a child by having his voice dubbed by another adult pretending to be a child.

Even outside of Italy, a number of people involved with this film would probably have landed in jail had they used a real child in the role of Michael. Because little Michael -- how shall I put it? -- has a "thing" for his mom. This becomes apparent near the beginning of the film, when he spies on mom and step-dad going at it in their bedroom. And, believe me, that is the LEAST creepy of several scenes involving Michael and mom, the most notorious being the final one which convincingly demonstrates that breastfeeding a zombie is NOT a good idea.

I rate this film five stars for its gore and non-stop zombie action and an extra two stars for Peter Bark.

Released just a year after "Curse of Frankenstein," "Revenge of Frankenstein" chronicles the further adventures of Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) as he miraculously escapes the guillotine (his fate at the end of the first movie), relocates to a new town (Carlsbruck), assumes a new identity (Dr. Stein), and seemingly becomes a respectable citizen. Before long, however, the doc is up to his old tricks, collecting body parts and transplanting a brain into a new stitched-together creature. This time, his experiment seems to be a rousing success. However, things soon go awry.

Like the 1935 Universal classic "Bride of Frankenstein," this is one of those rare sequels that surpasses the original. Although "Revenge" is not quite in the same league as "Bride," The Creature (played by Michael Gwynne) is a much more complicated, and therefore more interesting, character than Christopher Lee's Frankenstein Monster, who was basically just a homicidal maniac. Karl (The Creature) is not evil, merely misunderstood and terribly unlucky.

Peter Cushing's Baron Frankenstein is also a much more sympathetic character than he was in "Curse of Frankenstein." There he did not hesitate to engage in cold-blooded murder to further his goals. Here we have a kinder and gentler Baron, resolute to be sure but not murderously ruthless. This remarkable character transformation is never explained nor even alluded to. But it makes the Baron a character we can root for, something that we could never do in the original movie. In that regard, the title is somewhat misleading, since revenge is not a major theme and the Baron is not out to get those who may have wronged him.

The same steady hands who guided Hammer's first "Frankenstein" film to box-office success -- Terence Fisher as director and Jimmy Sangster as screenwriter -- are also at the helm in this one. Cushing's presence adds a certain gravitas to the proceedings, and the other actors, particularly Gwynne, also turn in first-rate performances. Although there are few scares, the movie is well written and maintains the viewer's interest throughout.

It should be noted that, like most of Hammer's Frankenstein sequels, this one chronicles the further adventures of Victor Frankenstein and not the Frankenstein Monster. In that respect, they are quite unlike the Universal sequels, where the Monster eventually ran out of things to do and ended up being a virtual parody of himself. The original Monster would, in fact, return in the next Hammer sequel, "The Evil of Frankenstein," and again a few years later in "Horror of Frankenstein," which was a remake of "Curse" (this time with Ralph Bates as the Baron) rather than a sequel. Both of these films, while enjoyable in their own way (particularly for Hammerphiles), are inferior to this one and, in my opinion, not as good as the other sequels (most notably "Frankenstein Created Woman") that do not feature the original Frankenstein Monster.

Highly recommended.

Despite its title, "Brides of Dracula" does not have the character of Dracula in it. Although the master vampire is dead, having been effectively dispatched by Dr. Van Helsing in the previous film, his disciples live on. One of them is Baron Meinster (David Peel), a young man who fell in with some bad company, and returned home a vampire. His mother, the Baroness (Martita Hunt), keeps him chained in the castle and periodically lures young women there to feed his blood lust.

Enter Mlle. Danielle (Yvonne Monlaur), a young school teacher who is lured to the castle, presumably to serve as snack food for the Baron. She stumbles across him chained to the wall, and unaware of his dark secret, allows him to escape. The Baron's first victim is his own mother, who is put out of her misery by Van Helsing (Peter Cushing). The Baron then follows Mlle. Danielle to the school where she is teaching and, several victims later, is finally dispatched by Van Helsing.

This is one of those rare sequels that comes close to equaling the original. It is not simply a retread of the Dracula story, but an imaginative and highly entertaining vampire tale in its own right. Peel doesn't have quite the sinister presence of Christopher Lee, but I actually enjoyed this film more than I did the Dracula sequels that had Lee in them. Peter Cushing turns in an excellent performance as Van Helsing; Hunt is outstanding as the Baroness whose love for her son is the source of her misdeeds; Freda Jackson is hilariously Over The Top as the devoted (and demented) servant, Greta; and the other characters, both major and minor, are well acted and well drawn.

I would heartily recommend this film to any fan of vampire movies or Hammer horror. I watched it recently on DVD and, despite the passage of the years, it remains a chillingly effective horror movie.

I first saw this movie in a drive-in theater the year it was first released and long before it became a well-known cult classic. As I recall, it was the third movie in a triple bill. I had no idea of what I had gotten myself into! There I was alone in my car and, ten minutes into the movie, scared sh--less! I had never seen a horror movie like this one before, and I had seen hundreds. Forty years later, "Night of the Living Dead" has not lost its power to chill.

The plot by now is too familiar to need retelling. But for those who have been living on another planet, I'll briefly explain. A group of people are holed up in a farmhouse, with a growing army of the undead outside and trying to get in. Instead of joining together to fight the zombies, they fight among themselves about strategy. The obnoxious white guy wants everyone to go down into the cellar. The black guy who is the main protagonist (a rarity in those days) says that would be suicide and wants everyone to remain upstairs. "United we stand, divided we fall" as the saying goes. And partly because of the bickering, the zombies end up invading the house.

Ironically, the obnoxious white guy turns out to have been right all along. Because the sole survivor, the black guy who wanted everyone to remain upstairs, ends up saving himself by locking himself in the cellar. The rescuers arrive the next day, mistake the survivor for a zombie, shoot him, and throw his body on the fire along with all the others.

This is the movie that put George Romero on the map and set the standard by which all future zombie movies must be measured. Its influence on the genre cannot be overstated. Romero would go on to make a sequel, "Dawn of the Dead" that in my opinion is even better than the original, as well as several others not quite up to the caliber of the first two.

This is one helluva scary movie and a must-see for any horror-movie fan.

Reviewers of this movie can be grouped into two categories: (1) those who condemn and/or mock it (the majority); and (2) those who defend it (the minority). I'll admit right off the bat that I'm part of the second group. And I defend it for the same reason as most of its other defenders. (Here comes the spoiler.) We find out at the end that the whole movie was a dream! It all took place in the hyperactive imagination of a young child who was knocked unconscious at the beginning of the film.

In that context, all of the silliness and cheesiness suddenly becomes not only comprehensible but justifiable and relevant. This is a point-of-view movie, and the POV is that of someone quite capable of imagining aliens in gorilla suits and space helmets. Sure, the movie looks low-budget. For $16,000 what do you expect? I've seen plenty of high-budget movies that I've enjoyed much less.

This is not a great movie, or even a good movie. But it was fun to watch, and it doesn't deserve the bad rap that it's gotten.

Anyone who views this movie expecting a remake of George Romero's 1968 classic is sure to go away disappointed. Apparently the creative minds behind this film wanted to do a remake of the obscure 1950s film, I Bury the Living. But the producers, wanting to make the product more marketable, decided to turn it into a rip-off of the Romero film. Under the circumstances, I can understand the disappointment of many reviewers and the low ratings.

However, if a viewer is willing to accept this film for what it really is -- a movie about the living dead that merely references the Romero film from time to time (as in the opening credits) -- he or she may be in for a pleasant surprise. Although it will never end up on anyone's 100 Best list, and I can't honestly call it a good movie, I did find it to be an entertaining, "not bad" movie.

The premise is actually quite different from the Romero movie. Instead of being a worldwide plague threatening to destroy humankind, this zombie outbreak is limited at first to the mortuary of "Junior" Tovar (Sid Haig), who cannot bring himself to cremate the dead people whom he's embalmed. So he simply leaves them lying around the mortuary. Over a period of two years, the corpses begin piling up and eventually become infected with a mysterious virus that gets into his embalming fluid. They then begin to come alive again. At first Junior manages to control the problem with his trusty shovel, but it soon gets beyond his control.

The main action takes place in the house of a local pot farmer, where the stoned-out characters are watching a broadcast of Romero's "Living Dead." They initially fail to comprehend the gravity of the situation, as a frightened young woman who has escaped from the zombies at Junior's mortuary seeks refuge in their house. The fact that the owner is engaging in illegal activity explains his persistent refusal to call the police. The house is finally overrun by zombies, and the remaining survivors flee with Junior (who has joined them and explained the source of the zombie outbreak) back to the mortuary. Then it turns out that Junior has been keeping a secret that threatens the lives of the other survivors.

Some reviewers have called this the worst zombie movie ever made. I wonder if they have seen some of the stuff I've seen. In my opinion, it's head and shoulders above such Italian-made crap as Zombie 4: After Death and Zombie 5: Killing Birds. The question that I ask after watching such movies is: do I feel that I have just wasted 80 minutes of my life or do I feel like I've been entertained? And . . . would I consider ever watching it again? Thus far, I've seen this movie twice and have felt entertained both times. If you want to see a decent retelling of the George Romero film, then watch Tom Savini's 1990 remake. If you're willing to settle for some mindless entertainment with plenty of zombie action and some gratuitous nudity to boot, then you may want to check this one out.

This is one of my all-time favorite horror movies. I saw it when it was first released almost 40 years ago, and I have watched it many times since. At first, this appears to be four quite separate movies all rolled into one. There's a mad doctor movie starring Vincent Price and assorted body parts. Then there's a modern-day vampire movie with Michael Gothard as the blood drinker and Alfred Marks as the intrepid inspector on his trail. There's an espionage movie with Christopher Lee at the helm. And, finally, a movie set in a country with a Nazi-like government, with Peter Cushing as the Supreme Leader and Marshall Jones as his much-too-ambitious subordinate.

Gradually, the various strands deftly begin coming together, like the pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, until we finally see the complete picture. I actually enjoyed this movie more on my second viewing, as I could more clearly see the picture taking shape. I will say nothing more about the plot(s), but for those who want to learn more, and don't mind spoilers, there's a link to an excellent synopsis on the main page.

Because of the film's complex structure, the three masters of horror -- Price, Lee, and Cushing -- share no screen time together with the exception of a brief (but important) scene involving Price and Lee. Cushing and Lee have roles that are little more than cameos. Price's role as the mad doctor is more substantial, and this is vintage Price at his hammiest and most endearing. Marks is drolly funny as the very British police superintendent, Gothard is appropriately creepy as the almost superhuman blood drinker, and Jones is a villain to be reckoned with. The director, Gordon Hessler, is a longtime collaborator of Alfred Hitchcock, and he also produced and directed some of American International's Edgar Allan Poe movies.

For those who are incapable of non-linear thinking, this movie may appear to be a chaotic mess, but I enjoyed it immensely and will certainly watch it again next time it shows up (without commercials) on a cable channel.

The Vampire Lovers is one of the better Hammer films of the 1970s. It has all the hallmarks that we expect from Hammer: good acting, good production values, and atmospheric settings. This time, however, the main vampire is not Dracula but Carmilla (aka Marcilla and Mircalla), played by the beautiful Ingrid Pitt. Years earlier, young Baron von Hartog (Douglas Wilmer) had destroyed a nest of vampires, one of whom had killed his sister. But he had been unable to find the grave of Mircalla Karnstein, and now she has come back.

A few reviewers found this film to be slow-moving and boring. It is true that if you want non-stop vampire action, this is not the movie for you. Likewise, those who are expecting a flesh feast will be disappointed. There is one extended (i.e., over a minute) nude scene involving Carmilla and one of her potential victims and three much shorter bits of nudity, but otherwise this is a horror movie (albeit a sexy one) and not a skin flick.

Most of the overt vampiric action takes place at the very beginning and very end of the movie -- the latter involving the great Peter Cushing, who plays more than the cameo role suggested by some reviewers. For the remaining hour, we see the beautiful but evil Carmilla seducing and attempting to destroy two equally beautiful victims -- first the daughter (Pippa Steele) of General von Spielsdorf (Cushing) and later the daughter (Madeline Smith) of the General's friend, Roger Morton (George Cole). Carmilla is aided and abetted by The Countess (Dawn Addams) and a mysterious Man in Black (John Forbes-Robertson).

There are some departures from traditional vampire movies. For example, Carmilla can go out in the day as long as she isn't in direct sunlight. And the vampire's victims don't turn into vampires themselves. They just die -- slowly in come cases, very quickly in others. Carmilla definitely prefers women victims over men, and the women whom she really likes are the ones who die most slowly.

Although The Vampire Lovers is quite different from Hammer's Dracula entries, I found it a very entertaining hour and a half and would recommend it as a good horror movie and a "must see" for any fan of Hammer horror.

When I first began watching this movie, I was expecting to see a zombie flick. "(Something) of the Dead" just has to be a zombie movie, right? Well, in this case, no. Its original title was "Tantrum," and it was subsequently changed by the distributor, presumably to make it more marketable. I can understand the disappointment of some reviewers, but if one accepts this movie for what it is -- a creepy little ghost story -- it's actually pretty good.

For some reason, residents of a town are turning into homicidal maniacs. The reason becomes clear as the story progresses. The spirit of a young boy who died an accidental and tragic death is coming back to seek revenge on those responsible. His spirit moves from one host to another, as the body count steadily mounts. I can understand why some reviewers found the ultimate resolution to be controversial, but in my opinion the ending is imaginative and very much in the spirit (so to speak) of the movie.

This movie was done on a very low budget, and several of the actors double as producers, make-up artists, costume designers, and so forth. I thought it had a very professional look considering the budget. The acting, while not of academy award caliber, was competent. And it definitely was creepy enough to make me feel that the short amount of time (about 70 minutes) it took to view was not wasted.

Not the greatest movie ever made, by any stretch of the imagination, but well worth a watch.

This movie is recommended only for those who feel they MUST see every vampire movie ever made. I've seen a lot of comments on this website to the effect that "(such and such) is the worst movie I've ever seen." In that case, the reviewer has obviously not seen THIS MOVIE. It's totally bottom of the barrel in terms of plot, direction, acting, and utter lack of scariness or suspense.

The plot, such as it is, involves a vampire cult in Venice, California, led by some vampire in a cheesy rubber mask and another vampire given to making long-winded and boring speeches. They are assisted by various other vampires in cheap-looking robes, a human servant, and assorted biker-type humans. The long-winded vampire wants to find his true love so that she can drive a stake through his heart (!), while his rubber-faced second-in-command wants to rule the world through an army of the undead brought to life by the "Book of the Dead." The book falls into the hands of this surfer dude and his bimbo girlfriend, who show it to a priest recommended by the local bookseller. Before the priest has time to completely decipher the book and learn its meaning, he is murdered by one of the black-robed guys. Instead of calling the police, surfer dude and girlfriend decide to get back the book themselves so that their friend Weird Harold (who apparently is a computer whiz along with being a musician and surfer) can complete the deciphering with the help of a partial translation that the priest left behind. Or something like that.

In any event, surfer dude and girlfriend are captured by the vampires who for some reason don't kill them like they've done to everyone else in the movie. Probably because they're the "stars." By means that must be seen to be believed, they get away from the vampires, alert Harold, his girlfriend, and two other bimbos. Then they go back to the vampires' secret hideaway one or two more times, get captured, escape, get re-captured, and finally kill all the vampires and associates with the help of this other black-robed dude whom they conjure up with the "Book of the Dead."

Although I've added a "spoiler alert" in order to avoid being added to the blacklist, there is really nothing here to spoil. The characters, good guys and bad guys alike, are all so completely uninteresting that their fates are of no concern to us. The movie is NOT redeemed in any way by the T&A, of which there is precious little in the possibly bowdlerized version that I watched. In fact, the entire bikini beach motif disappears about halfway through the movie, the remainder of which takes place indoors, primarily in the vampires' secret lair (which is shrouded in smoke so that it doesn't look so much like it was shot in someone's basement).

I've seen a lot of cheap-looking horror movies, but I don't remember one quite as cheap or amateurish as this one. It was originally shown on the USA network's "Up All Nite" and has recently re-surfaced in the "on demand" section of our local cable network. Not recommended.