One of the great things about Mill Creek Entertainment [besides their commitment to make available inexpensive volumes of cult TV shows] is that they also collect and release B-movies… lots and lots of B-movies.
GoreHouse Greats is their latest such collection of horror movies. To review all twelve titles would kill a bit too much bandwidth, so, following the jump, there’s a look at a few of the titles with assessments of the set’s overall quality.
After checking out the horror flicks included in the GoreHouse set – twelve movies on three double-sided DVDs – I’ve come to the conclusion that the folks at Mill Creek entertainment have a very strange sense of humor.
Why else would they include a film like Blood of Dracula’s Castle – a movie in which Dracula and his wife have changed their names to the more American Townsend; have a butler who worships a very pagan god; a giant, one-eyed version of Renfield, and have a guest who’s a serial killer – a film that aims at every genre but fails in all of them, making it one of those films that are so bad they’re fun. The fun is enhanced by the truly awful print used here – you almost expect a “reel missing” card to appear…
Then there’s the atmospheric, black & white Terrified. A college psychology student, who’s doing a paper on how much terror a person can stand before breaking, gets a chance to find out when someone starts burying people under cement in new graves in the graveyard of a nearby ghost town. Besides a solid – and occasionally very scary – script, Terrified features terrific character actor Denver Pyle as the town’s sheriff. In this case, the original print was in pretty good shape – there’s almost no noise, in the audio or video.
There’s a wealth of well known actors who pop up in key roles here, too: besides Denver Pyle, there’s Cameron Mitchell [Nightmare in Wax, which also featured The T-Bones]; Linda Christian, Robert Alda and Neil Hamilton [The Devil’s Hand, with theme music by Baker Knight], Alex Rocco [Stanley], Glynis Barber and Peter Mayhew [Terror]; and many more.
The titles here span almost thirty years: 1962 [The Devil’s Hand] to 1991 [Brain Twisters] and the print quality ranges from abysmal [Blood of Dracula’s Castle] to very good [Stanley]. The packaging is the Mill Creek standard – standard case and black paper & cellophane envelopes.
Subjects range from terror in a wax museum [Nightmare in Wax] to nasty critters – a Native-American man trains a rattlesnake to take revenge on those he believes have wronged him [Stanley]. Whether you enjoy suspense, nasty critters, or just plain insanity, you can expect to find it – and more – in the GoreHouse collection.
Final Grade: GoreHouse – B-