HORROR MOVE MARATHON

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920): In one of the most influential films of the silent era, Werner Krauss plays the title character, a sinister hypnotist who travels the carnival circuit displaying a somnambulist named Cesare (Conrad Veidt). In one tiny German town, a series of murders coincides with Caligari's visit. When the best friend of hero Francis (Friedrich Feher) is killed, the deed seems to be the outgrowth of a romantic rivalry over the hand of the lovely Jane (Lil Dagover). Francis suspects Caligari, but he is ignored by the police. Investigating on his own, Francis seemingly discovers that Caligari has been ordering the somnambulist to commit the murders, but the story eventually takes a more surprising direction. Caligari's Expressionist style ultimately led to the dark shadows and sharp angles of the film noir urban crime dramas of the 1940s
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Nosferatu (1922): The film begins in the Carpathian mountains, where real estate agent Hutter (Gustav von Wagenheim) has arrived to close a sale with the reclusive Herr Orlok (Max Schreck). Despite the feverish warnings of the local peasants, Hutter insists upon completing his journey to Orlok's sinister castle. While enjoying his host's hospitality, Hutter accidently cuts his finger-whereupon Orlok tips his hand by staring intently at the bloody digit, licking his lips. Hutter catches on that Orlok is no ordinary mortal when he witnesses the vampiric nobleman loading himself into a coffin in preparation for his journey to Bremen. By the time the ship bearing Orlok arrives at its destination, the captain and crew have all been killed-and partially devoured. There follows a wave of mysterious deaths in Bremen, which the local authorities attribute to a plague of some sort. But Ellen, Hutter's wife, knows better. Armed with the knowledge that a vampire will perish upon exposure to the rays of the sun, Ellen offers herself to Orlok, deliberately keeping him "entertained" until sunrise. At the cost of her own life, Ellen ends Orlok's reign of terror once and for all.
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Phantom Of The Opera: Lon Chaney stars as Erik, the Phantom, in what is probably his most famous and certainly his most horrifying role. Produced by Universal, the film shot in 1923 and shelved for nearly two years, and was subjected to intensive studio tinkering. While many expected a disaster, the film turned out to be a rousing success. It was both the stepping off point for Chaney's run as a superstar at MGM and the prototype for the horror film cycle at Universal in the 1930s. The story concerns Erik, a much-feared fiend who haunts the Paris Opera House. Lurking around the damp, dank passages deep in the cellars of the theater, he secretly coaches understudy Christine Daae (Mary Philbin) to be an opera star. Through a startling sequence of terrors, including sending a giant chandelier crashing down on the opera patrons, the Phantom forces the lead soprano to withdraw from the opera, permitting Christine to step in. Luring Christine into his subterranean lair below the opera house, the Phantom confesses his love. But Christine is in love with Raoul de Chagny (Norman Kerry). The Phantom demands that Christine break off her relationship with Raoul before he'll allow her to return to the opera house stage. She agrees, but immediately upon her release from the Phantom's lair, she runs into the arms of Raoul and they plan to flee to England after her performance that night. The Phantom overhears their conversation and, during her performance, the Phantom kidnaps Christine, taking her to the depths of his dungeon. It is left to Raoul and Simon Buquet (Gibson Gowland), a secret service agent, to track down the Phantom and rescue Christine.
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Dracula(1931): "I am....Drac-u-la. I bid you velcome." Thus does Bela Lugosi declare his presence in the 1931 screen version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Director Tod Browning invests most of his mood and atmosphere in the first two reels, which were based on the original Stoker novel; the rest of the film is a more stagebound translation of the popular stage play by John Balderston and Hamilton Deane. Even so, the electric tension between the elegant Dracula and the vampire hunter Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) works as well on the screen as it did on the stage. And it's hard to forget such moments as the lustful gleam in the eyes of Mina Harker (Helen Chandler) as she succumbs to the will of Dracula, or the omnipresent insane giggle of the fly-eating Renfield (Dwight Frye). Despite the static nature of the final scenes, Dracula is a classic among horror films, with Bela Lugosi giving the performance of a lifetime as the erudite Count (both Lugosi and co-star Frye would forever after be typecast as a result of this film, which had unfortunate consequences for both men's careers).
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Frankenstein: Still regarded as the definitive film version of Mary Shelley's classic tale of tragedy and horror, Frankenstein made unknown character actor Boris Karloff a star and created a new icon of terror. Along with the highly successful Dracula, released earlier the same year, it launched Universal Studio's golden age of 1930s horror movies. The film's greatness stems less from its script than from the stark but moody atmosphere created by director James Whale; Herman Rosse's memorable set designs, particularly the fantastic watchtower laboratory, featuring electrical equipment designed by Kenneth Strickfaden; the creature's trademark look from makeup artist Jack Pierce, who required Karloff to don pounds of makeup and heavy asphalt shoes to create the monster's unique lurching gait; and Karloff's nuanced performance as the tormented and bewildered creature. Frankenstein was greeted with screams, moans, and fainting spells upon its initial release, obliging Universal to add a disclaimer in which Edward Van Sloan advises the faint of heart to leave the theater immediately. If they don't: "Well...we've warned you."
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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Tobe Hooper's influential cult classic continues the subgenre of horror films based on the life and "career" of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein, which began with Alfred Hitchcock's own influential cult classic Psycho. When Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) hears that the Texas cemetery where her grandfather is buried has been vandalized, she gathers her wheelchair-bound brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain) and several other friends together to see if grandpa's remains are still in one piece. While in the area, Sally and her friends decide to visit grandfather's old farmhouse. Unfortunately, a family of homicidal slaughterhouse workers who take their job home with them have taken over the house next door. Included amongst the brood is Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), a chainsaw-wielding human horror show who wears a face mask made out of human skin. Sally's friends are rapidly exterminated one-by-one by the next-door neighbors, leaving only Sally left to fight off Leatherface and his clan
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Halloween: It was "The Night HE Came Home," warned the posters for John Carpenter's career-making horror smash. In Haddonfield, Ilinois, on Halloween night 1963, 6-year-old Michael Myers inexplicably slaughters his teenage sister. His psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) can't penetrate Michael's psyche after years of institutionalization, but he knows that, when Myers escapes before Halloween in 1978, there is going to be hell to pay in Haddonfield. While Loomis heads to Haddonfield to alert police, Myers spots bookish teenager Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and follows her, constantly appearing and vanishing as Laurie and her looser friends Lynda (P.J. Soles) and Annie (Nancy Loomis) make their Halloween plans. By nightfall, the responsible Laurie is doing her own and Annie's babysitting jobs, while Annie and Lynda frolic in the parent-free house across the street. But Annie and Lynda are not answering the phone, and suspicious Laurie heads across the street to the darkened house to see what is going on
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A Nightmare On Elm Street: Teenagers in a small town are dropping like flies, apparently in the grip of mass hysteria causing their suicides. A cop's daughter (Heather Langenkamp) traces the cause to child molester Fred Krueger (Robert Englund), who was burned alive by angry parents many years before. Krueger has now come back in the dreams of his killers' children, claiming their lives as his revenge. The teenaged leads are sympathetic and intelligent, unlike the dumb victims presented in most films of the period, and they are ably backed up by veterans like John Saxon and Ronee Blakley. Director Wes Craven creates moments of real dread by examining the line between nightmares and reality, as well as the "sins of the parents" theme, and although the film is quite gory, it never resorts to cheap bloodletting for its effect. A unique and disturbing experience, this film is highly recommended for horror buffs
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The Mummy: An Ancient Egyptian priest called Imhotep is revived when an archaeological expedition finds Imhotep's mummy and one of the archaeologists accidentally reads an ancient life-giving spell. Imhotep escapes from the archaeologists, taking the Scroll of Thoth, and prowls Cairo seeking the reincarnation of the soul of his ancient lover, Princess Ankh-es-en-amon.

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KingKong 1933:How would you like to star opposite the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood?" Enticed by these words, brunette leading lady Fay Wray dyed her hair blonde and accepted the role of Ann Darrow in King Kong -- and stayed with the project even after learning that her "leading man" was a 50-foot ape. The film introduces us to flamboyant, foolhardy documentary filmmaker Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong), who sails off to parts unknown to film his latest epic with leading lady Darrow in tow. Disembarking at Skull Island, they stumble on a ceremony in which the native dancers circle around a terrified-looking young girl, chanting, "Kong! Kong!" The chief (Noble Johnson) and witch doctor (Steve Clemente) spot Denham and company and order them to leave. But upon seeing Ann, the chief offers to buy the "golden woman" to serve as the "bride of Kong." Denham refuses, and he and the others beat a hasty retreat to their ship. Late that night, a party of native warriors sneak on board the ship and kidnap Ann. They strap her to a huge sacrificial altar just outside the gate, then summon Kong, who winds up saving Ann instead of devouring her. Kong is eventually taken back to New York, where he breaks loose on the night of his Broadway premiere, thinking that his beloved Ann is being hurt by the reporters' flash bulbs. Now at large in New York, Kong searches high and low for Ann (in another long-censored scene, he plucks a woman from her high-rise apartment, then drops her to her death when he realizes she isn't the girl he's looking for). After proving his devotion by wrecking an elevated train, Kong winds up at the top of the Empire State Building, facing off against a fleet of World War I fighter planes
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PLAN 9 FROM OUTERSPACE: With its incoherent plot, jaw-droppingly odd dialogue, inept acting, threadbare production design, and special effects so shoddy that they border on the surreal, Plan 9 From Outer Space has often been called the worst movie ever made. But it's an oddly endearing disaster; boasting genuine enthusiasm and undeniable charm, it is the work of people who loved movies and loved making them, even if they displayed little visible talent. In Plan 9, alien invaders attempt to conquer the world by raising the dead, starting with an old man dressed in a Dracula costume (Bela Lugosi, in a few minutes of left-over footage grafted into this film), his much-younger and well-proportioned wife (Maila "Vampira" Nurmi), and a remarkably overweight police officer (Tor Johnson). Often funny and consistently entertaining (if almost always for the wrong reasons), Plan 9 From Outer Space is an anti-masterpiece if there ever was one, and as Criswell so brilliantly puts it, "Can you PROVE it didn't happen?!?"
Zombi 2: After a New York harbor patrolman is murdered at the hands of a flesh-hungry ghoul aboard an abandoned yacht, Anne ( Tisa Farrow) -- the daughter of the ship's missing owner -- teams with a newspaper reporter (Ian McCulloch) for a private investigation. Clues eventually lead them to a Caribbean island where the dead refuse to stay dead. A voodoo curse is at work, and battle with the bloodthirsty zombies must be joined.


The Giant Claw (1957):Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow), while engaged in a radar test flight, spots an unidentified flying object. Jets are scrambled to pursue and identify the object but one goes missing. Officials are initially angry at MacAfee but are forced to take his story seriously after several other planes disappear. A gigantic bird, purported to come from an antimatter galaxy (and then later from the year seventeen million B.C.), is responsible for all the incidents. Mitch, along with his mathematician girlfriend Sally Caldwell (Mara Corday), Dr. Karol Noymann (Edgar Barrier), and generals Considine (Morris Ankrum) and Van Buskirk (Robert Shayne), works feverishly to develop a way to defeat the seemingly invincible enemy. The climactic showdown takes place in New York City, with the bird attacking both the Empire State and United Nations buildings.

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Monsters Crash The Pajama Party (1965): possibley the only dvd that you just need to experience to see/understand the weirdness of it.
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House Of Wax 1953:

Professor Henry Jarrod (Vincent Price) is a devoted wax figure sculptor with a museum in 1910s New York. When his financial partner Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts) demands more sensational exhibits to increase profits, Jarrod refuses. In retaliation, Burke deliberately sets the museum on fire, intending to claim the insurance money. He fights off Jarrod in the process, and splashes kerosene over his body, leaving him to die in the fire. Miraculously, Jarrod survives with severe injuries, and builds a new House of Wax with help from threatening deaf-mute sculptor, Igor (Charles Bronson).

The museum's popular "Chamber of Horrors" showcases both notable crimes and more recent ones, including the murder of Jarrod's former business partner by a cloaked, disfigured killer. Burke's fiancée, Cathy Gray (Carolyn Jones) is also killed. But when Cathy’s friend, Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk), visits the museum, she makes a discovery that leads to the horrifying truth behind the House of Wax - that all of the waxworks are the wax-coated bodies of Jarrod's victims. Allen herself almost becomes an exhibit, but in the end it is the disfigured Jarrod who falls into the waxworks.

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Waxwork (1988): In this horror film, an evil magician creates a wax display of famous monsters and murderers and invites a group of unsuspecting young college students to view the collection. However, when the kids are trapped in the deadly displays, one-by-one they soon discover that the wax models are more than they appear to be.


The Invisible Man(1933) A mysterious stranger, his face swathed in bandages and his eyes obscured by dark spectacles, has taken a room at a cozy inn in the British village of Ipping. Never leaving his quarters, the stranger demands that the staff leave him completely alone. Working unmolested with his test tubes, the stranger does not notice when the landlady inadvertently walks into his room one morning. But she notices that her guest seemingly has no head! The stranger, one Jack Griffin, is a scientist, who'd left Ipping several months earlier while conducting a series of tests with a strange new drug called monocane. He returns to the laboratory of his mentor, Dr. Cranley (Henry Travers), where he reveals his secret to onetime partner Dr. Kemp (William Harrigan) and former fiancee Flora Cranley (Gloria Stuart). Monocane is a formula for invisibility, and has rendered Griffin's entire body undetectable to the human eye. Alas, monocane has also had the side effect of driving Griffin insane. With megalomanic glee, Griffin takes Kemp into his confidence, explaining how he plans to prove his superiority over other humans by wreaking as much havoc as possible. At first, his pranks are harmless; then, without batting an eyelash, he turns to murder, beginning with the strangling of a comic-relief constable. When Kemp tries to turn Griffin over to the police, he himself is marked for death. Despite elaborate measures taken by the police, Griffin is able to murder Kemp, considerately taking the time to describe his homicidal methods to his helpless victim. After a reign of terror costing hundreds of lives, Griffin is cornered in a barn, his movements betrayed by his footsteps in the snow. Mortally wounded by police bullets, Griffin is taken to a hospital, where he regretfully tells Flora that he's paying the price for meddling into Things Men Should Not Know. As Griffin dies, his face becomes slowly visible: first the skull, then the nerve endings, then layer upon layer of raw flesh, until he is revealed to be Claude Rains, making his first American film appearance.
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Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation:The film, as a semi-remake of the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, takes as its subjects four teenagers, Sean, Heather, Barry and Jenny (Renee Zellweger) on prom night who decide to leave the festivities early. They make a detour in the Texas woods and end up in a car accident. They then come into contact with a family of psychopaths who inhabit a dilapidated farmhouse in the middle of the forest - the family includes Vilmer (Matthew McConaughey), a trucker with an animatronic leg; W.E., a literature-quoting redneck; Darla (Vilmer's love-interest), who runs a real-estate office nearby; and Leatherface, a cross-dressing murderer wielding a chainsaw.

HELLRAISER: The film opens with a chilling prologue in which globe-trotting pervert Frank (Sean Chapman) -- a connoisseur of sexual depravity seeking the ultimate sensual experience -- purchases a small, intricate puzzle box from an unseen dealer in an unspecified country. Upon solving the puzzle, Frank opens the door to a hellish alternate universe and is promptly torn to ribbons by a network of hooks and chains; his strewn body parts are subsequently collected by the Cenobites -- grotesque, S & M-clad denizens of hell.
The story continues several years later, when Frank's brother, Larry (Andrew Robinson), moves into Frank's abandoned house with his daughter, Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), and his new wife, Julia (Clare Higgins). An accident causes some of Larry's blood to spill on the attic floor, which somehow triggers Frank's hideous resurrection. His body only half-composed, Frank seeks the tacit assistance of Julia -- with whom he had once had a torrid sexual liaison -- in restoring him to human form. Still secretly in love with Frank, Julia assists him by seducing men from the town and bringing them back to the house so her undead lover can drain their bodies of blood. Her increasingly furtive behavior arouses the suspicions of Kirsty, who had already moved to an apartment to get away from her despised stepmother. After following Julia and her next potential victim home, Kirsty comes face to face with the still-incomplete Frank, narrowly escaping with her life...and with the puzzle box.
After losing consciousness, Kirsty awakens in the hospital, where she manages to solve the box's intricate mechanism and summon a trio of Cenobites -- including their apparent leader (played by Doug Bradley and dubbed "Pinhead" on subsequent sequels) -- who are prepared to claim her. In desperation, Kirsty offers them a bargain in which they agree to spare her soul if she leads them to Frank. Kirsty soon returns home to find Julia with her father...whose behavior has become disturbingly unnatural. Realizing that her father has become Frank's latest victim -- and that her uncle is now walking around in his brother's skin
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BLAIR WITCH 2:

The story is presented through a series of flashbacks, as some of the young adults are questioned at a police station about their time spent in the woods.

The story begins in Burkittsville, Maryland, where the release of the original Blair Witch Project has attracted a group of young tourists. They want to find the Blair Witch, and hire Jeff, who has made a business of leading tours into the Blair Witch's woods called the BlairWitch-Hunt. They venture into the woods to camp for the night.

They wake up the next morning with no memories of a five-hour period of the previous night, and videotapes shot during the time seem unclear. Over the course of the rest of the movie, several of the tourists are murdered, and the remaining individuals are suspected as the killers. It is never made clear whether the murders are caused by witchcraft, the still-never-seen Blair Witch, or some other cause. The people left alive claim to have no memory of most of the deaths, and recall instances of possession or suicide, but videotapes taken during the events all show the living tourists killed their friends.

The movie ends with the observation that memories can lie, but that video always tells the truth, implying that the movie itself (Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2) has lied to the audience, and only the videotape at the end of the film reveals the "true" story: that the remaining tourists are the murderers. The film shows Tristen, who has been "possessed" by the witch, shouting out demonic things and threatening to kill them all, so the other tourists kill her; however, the video reveals that the tourists were actually the ones possessed and what they heard was an auditory hallucination. In reality, Tristen was screaming for her life.


THE BLOB 1958: In his first starring role, Steve McQueen plays a typical oversexed, car-lovin' highschooler who can't get anyone to believe his story about a huge meteor, which crashes to earth and begins exuding a pink, gooey substance. Affixing itself to the body of an old man, the "blob" begins parasitically sucking the life out of several unfortunate humans, growing to an enormous size. Problem is, the disappearances of the victims can all be explained (one is supposed to be out of town, another is attending a convention), so the cops still won't believe McQueen or his girlfriend Aneta Corsaut (the future Helen Crump of The Andy Griffith Show). Rallying his teen pals, McQueen finally manages to get the adults' attention-but by now, the Blob is consuming entire city blocks

House on Haunted Hill: is the tale of five people invited to stay the night in a haunted house by an eccentric millionaire, Fredrick Loren, who is throwing the "party" for his fourth wife, Annabelle, with the stipulation that the power will be out and all doors will be locked at midnight, allowing no accessible escape. Anyone who stays in the house for the entire night, given that they are still alive, will each receive $10,000.

The five guests all arrive in separate funeral cars with a hearse leading, which he explains may be empty now, but they may be in need of it later. He explains the rules of the party and gives each of the guests a gun for protection. Loren's wife tries to warn the guests that her husband is psychotic, causing them to be very suspicious of him, especially Nora Manning, who becomes convinced that he's trying to kill her when she keeps seeing mysterious ghouls, including the ghost of Annabelle, who had hanged herself after being forced to attend the party.

After being driven into a fit of hysteria by the ghosts haunting her, Nora shoots Mr. Loren, assuming he is going to kill her. Dr. Trent, another guest, tries to get rid of the body by pushing it into acid, but the lights go out, and when they come back on, both of the men are gone. Annabelle emerges, having faked her death with the help of Dr. Trent, and having apparently tricked Nora into killing Loren. Suddenly, a skeleton emerges from the acid accompanied by the voice of Loren. The spectre approaches Annabelle as she recoils in terror. In this panic, the screaming Annabelle accidentally backs into the acid herself. The real Mr. Loren walks out of the shadow, holding the contraption that he was using to control the skeleton of Dr. Trent. In his triumph, he watches Annabelle disintegrate.

Nora tells the other guests that she's shot Loren in the cellar, and they all rush down there. When they arrive, they see that he's actually alive, and he explains to them that his wife and Dr. Trent were having an affair, and they'd planned to trick Nora into murdering him so that they could get away with his money. He had not loaded Nora's guns with bullets, but blanks. Just when everyone thinks the trauma is finally over, Mr. Pritchard, the house owner, looks up, a terrified expression on his face, and announces that the ghosts are finally coming for them.

AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL!: The film is set in a small Brazilian town whose location is unknown. Zé do Caixão, the local undertaker who disdains religion and emotion and who believes the only thing that matters is the "continuity of the blood", is looking for the perfect woman to bear him a superior child. Since his wife Lenita is sterile, Zé begins to flirt with Terezinha, the fiancée of his best friend Antonio. However, Terezinha scolds him by saying Antonio is the only man of her life. During a Catholic holiday, Zé kills Lenita by tying her up and having a poisonous spider bite her. The local authorities cannot find a clue to arrest him and he remains free to do whatever he wants.

Some days later, Zé is invited by Antonio to visit a local gypsy who will tell the fortune of Antonio's marriage with Terezinha. The gypsy reveals, however, that there is going to be a tragic disaster, and the two will never get married. Zé, in response, calls the her a fraud and states that the supernatural is a hoax. She warns him not to mock the supernatural forces, lest they make him pay. That night, Zé and Antonio go to Antonio's house, where Antonio claims that he really didn't believe the witch's words and he and Terezinha will have a happy life together. Fulfilling the witch's prophecy, Zé bludgeons and then drowns Antonio.

Once again, the police can find no evidence to directly implement Zé with the crime. He proceeds with his plan to seduce Terezinha by purchasing a canary for her, which she accepts. However, he starts to touch her against her will. Terezinha tries to resist, but Zé beats her and viciously rapes her. After this, Terezinha curses him for his brutality, saying she will commit suicide and return to bring his soul to hell. Zé laughs at her, but the next day she is found hanging in her home. To his surprise, she doesn't blame him in her suicide note. Meanwhile, the local doctor begins to suspect Zé for the recent outbreak of deaths that has occurred. Zé becomes aware of the doctor's suspicions and proceeds to brutally murder him.

Time passes, and Zé is still unpunished for his crimes. On the Day of the Dead he meets Marta, a young woman who is visiting her relatives, and decides to choose her as his next perfect woman. Zé escorts Marta home late at night, only to be confronted by the gypsy who predicted the doom of Antonio and Terezinha. She tells him that his soul shall be claimed by lost souls and the Devil at midnight. Zé threatens the gypsy, but after leaving Marta at her destination, he is soon visited by ghostly apparitions that test his courage. Realizing he cannot face the apparitions, Zé runs away, but coincidentally arrives at the mausoleum where Antonio and Terezinha were buried. Finally at the edge of his sanity, Zé opens the coffins of his victims to prove they are really dead, but instead sees that their eyes are open, as if they are still alive. Some time later, the locals come to the mausoleum after hearing Zé's blood-curdling screams and find him horribly disfigured, his eyes bulging open similar to those of the two corpses. At that same time, the bells of the local church ring, announcing the stroke of midnight.


CREEPSHOW: Two of the most venerable names in the horror field, author Stephen King and director George A. Romero, present this anthology of original twisted tales inspired by the E.C. horror comics of the 50's and 60's (themselves a more direct basis for the popular Tales from the Crypt TV series). The five stories are framed within the pages of a comic book which a boy's insensitive father has thrown in the garbage. The first tale, "Father's Day," features a zombie patriarch returning to claim his Father's Day cake; "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" stars King himself as a slack-jawed yokel whose discovery of a radioactive meteorite turns him into a walking weed; "Something to Tide You Over" presents a deadly-serious Leslie Nielsen as a cuckolded husband who plans an elaborate seaside revenge; "The Crate" unleashes its ferocious man-eating contents on the enemies of a meek college professor; and "They're Creeping Up On You" pits obsessively-clean billionaire E.G. Marshall against a swarm of cockroaches in his sterile penthouse. The chapters are uniformly creative, filmed in garish comic-book colors, and Tom Savini's makeup effects are quite memorable (particularly the monster from "The Crate"), though the campy treatment does become exhausting after two hours' runtime. The final segment is the most impressive, thanks to Marshall's over-the-top performance, though the planned scope of the cockroach invasion was drastically reduced

Basket Case(1982): The film begins with a bloody prologue and the arrival of young Duane Bradley (Kevin Van Hentenryck) at a broken-down New York hotel full of drunks, hookers, and assorted weirdos. An upstate native with few big-city survival skills, the earnest Duane seems slightly off. He flashes lots of bills at the hotel manager, carries a large wicker basket with him, and seems bewildered at the variety of characters on display. Once he's alone, Duane's own behavior becomes bewildering as he talks incessantly to some unseen presence and drops prodigious quantities of fast food into his basket. After Duane visits a surgeon's office and the doctor gets rendered into a mangled corpse, all becomes clear; Duane is half of a pair of Siamese twins who were separated against their will in a brutal operation a decade earlier. Belial, his lumpen, beachball-sized brother, secretly survived the procedure and now wants to exact revenge on those who separated him from Duane. Things go according to plan except for one thing: Duane falls hard for coy, busty Sharon (Terri Susan Smith), the receptionist of one of the nefarious doctors. That doesn't sit well with the malformed Belial, who's as attracted to Sharon as he is jealous of Duane's romance with her



Re-Animator(1985): After being expelled from the Zurich University Institute of Medicine in Switzerland, Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) arrives at Miskatonic University in New England in order to further his studies. He rents a room from fellow medical student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), and converts the building's basement into his own personal laboratory. Cain, meanwhile, is secretly dating Megan (Barbara Crampton), daughter of school dean Alan Halsey (Robert Sampson).
There is an instant animosity between West and faculty member Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale). Hill's theory of brain death bears a remarkable resemblance to that of West's mentor, Dr. Hans Gruber (Al Berry), a professor in Zürich. In the opening scene, West brings this dead professor back to life with horrific side-effects; a result, as West explains, of having given Gruber an overdose of his re-agent. Undaunted, West continues his personal research at Miskatonic, soon re-animating Dan's dead cat, Rufus. Dan discovers West's experiments and West quickly recruits him as his partner.
Soon the two sneak into the morgue to test the re-agent on a human subject. The corpse revives and goes on a rampage, attacking both West and Cain before escaping into the autopsy room. Dean Halsey stumbles upon the scene and, despite attempts by both West and Cain to save him, is brutally killed by the re-animated corpse. Armed with a bone saw, West finally manages to dispatch that which he's only just brought back to life. Hardly fazed by the violence and excited at the prospect of a fresh dead subject to work with, West injects Halsey with the re-agent. Halsey returns to life, but in a zombie-like state.
Dr. Hill discovers West's work, imprisons and eventually lobotomizes Halsey, while forcing West to continue the research so that Hill can take credit for the serum's discovery. West kills Hill, decapitating him with a shovel, then re-animates both his head and body. While West is taking notes on what Hill's head is saying, his body knocks out West and escapes, carrying his head, stealing the serum and sending the lobotomized Halsey out to kidnap Megan. Meanwhile, Dan and Megan find evidence of Hill's secret obsession with her and that Hill had lobotomized her father, forcing him to obey Hill's wishes.
Cain and West track Halsey to the morgue where they find Hill sexually molesting a restrained Megan. Cain frees Megan while West distracts Hill. Hill reveals that he has re-animated and lobotomized several corpses so they will do his bidding. However, Megan manages to get through to her lobotomized father, who fights off the corpses long enough for Cain and Megan to escape. In the ensuing chaos, Halsey is torn to pieces by the other corpses and West injects Hill's body with what he believes is a lethal overdose of the serum. Hill's body takes on a horribly monstrous new form and attacks West, who screams out to Cain to save his work before he continues fighting with Hill. (West appears in the next sequel, but it is unclear how he escaped, possibly that he destroyed Hill's body or that the serum's overdose destroyed the body into pieces which freed West, which is why Hill in the next sequel was not seen with his body.)
As Dan and Megan run from the morgue, Megan is attacked by one of the re-animated corpses and killed. Dan takes her to the hospital emergency room but is unable to revive her. He injects her with West's serum. Just after the scene fades to black, Megan screams


White Zombie(1931): is a 1932 American independent horror film directed and produced by brothers Victor Halperin and Edward Halperin respectively. The film stars Béla Lugosi as Murder Legendre, Madge Bellamy as Madeline Short, Joseph Cawthorn as Dr. Bruner and Robert W. Frazer as Charles Beaumont. The film's story takes place in Haiti, where the plantation owner Murder Legendre uses his supernatural powers over the natives to do his bidding as zombies. When Madeline Short turns down an offer of marriage from Beaumont, he makes a deal with Lugosi that Short become a zombie and implicitly become Beaumont's love-slave. When Short becomes a zombie, Murder relishes the hold he has over Beaumont, refusing to release Short from her zombie trance, leading Short's fiancé Neil Parker and Dr. Bruner to attack Murder's sugar mill.
The film was based on the 1928 play Zombie. Outside Lugosi and Cawthorn, the film cast and crew consisted of a film crew whose careers had slumped by the 1930s. Large portions of the film were shot on the Universal Studios lot, borrowing many props and scenery from other horror films of the era. The film premiered in New York where it opened to generally unfavorable critical reception with critics focusing on weak acting and an over-the-top story. The film was not as popular as other horror films at the box office but made a great profit as an independent feature.
White Zombie is considered the first zombie film with its story featuring resurrected corpses who walk in a trance.