The Abominable Dr. Phibes

"The Abominable Dr. Phibes" (1971) starring Vincent Price, Joseph Cotten & Hugh Griffith  is about a disfigured doctor / scientist that is out for deadly revenge on the 7 doctors that failed to save his wife.

Dr. Phibes (Price) is a doctor and mad scientist that is terribly disfigured after an automobile accident which caused his beloved wife to die.  He lives in an art deco styled house and keeps himself entertained by playing his organ along with his strange looking orchestra and his beautiful and silent assistant Vulnavia (Virginia North) and performs lavish musical dance routines much like a weird Broadway musical!  When not applying his fake face and entertaining himself in his visually stunning home in over the top outfits, he is planning and carrying out the tragic deaths of the team of incompetent doctors that failed to save his wife's life.

Dr. Phibes is very creative in making the deaths follow the Ten Plagues of Egypt from the Old Testament, including death by bees, bats, locusts and much more.  The Scotland Yard inspector who is investigating all the murders adds a comic touch to the horror of this film.

I was pleasantly surprised by this movie!  It is visually stunning and a feast for the eyes!  The story is inventive and the characters are engaging.  This is now probably my favorite Vincent Price horror film!

Dolls

"Dolls" (1987) is a campy horror movie starring Ian Patrick Williams, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon & Carrie Lorraine about two groups of travelers who get stranded during a storm and end up at the mansion of an elderly doll maker and his wife.

Young Judy is traveling with her father and stepmother through the English countryside.  The stepmother is played by Carolyn Purdy-Gordon and she is delightfully cold and evil to her sweet stepdaughter.  They seek refuge from the storm at the Hartwicke's mansion and discover the elderly couple is very eccentric but welcoming and that every room is filled with handmade dolls and toys made by the man.  Judy is very intrigued by all the toys but the dolls of course are more than they seem.

Shortly thereafter, three more people arrive, mild-mannered Ralph and the two British punk rock girls that he picked up hitchhiking in the storm.  Everyone gets a meal and a room and they all settle in for the night.  The night is when everything starts coming alive, including all the dolls in the house and they aren't nice innocent dolls either, they are filled with evil!

I really enjoyed this movie!  It is campy and fun.  The Gothic English mansion is nice and eerie and having everyone end up wandering the huge house at night brings the requisite scares.  The toys are eerie and scary too.

Dracula: Prince of Darkness

"Dracula: Prince of Darkness" (1966) is a classic Hammer horror film starring Christopher Lee, Barbara Shelley & Andrew Keir.

In the late 1800s, two unsuspecting English couples are visiting the Carpathian Mountains on vacation.  They are going to visit the town of Karlsbad but the local priest tries to warn them away.  Since it is already on their "program" they go anyway.  However the carriage driver strands them 2 km from their destination because it is getting dark and he doesn't want to be caught near the castle that he won't admit is there.  A driver-less carriage soon arrives and whisks them to Count Dracula's castle where his manservant greets them and says he welcomes travelers per his dead master's instructions.  Little do the tourists know that they may not be leaving the castle tonight or any night!

This is a great vampire classic filled with plenty of spooky atmosphere!  We have a castle with hidden dungeons filled with a resurrected vampire.  Christopher Lee is brilliant as the evil and ever silent Dracula.   

Haunted

"Haunted" (1995) is a spooky old fashioned haunted house horror film starring Aidan Quinn, Kate Beckinsale, Anthony Andrews and John Gielgud based on James Herbert's novel.

Professor David Ash (Quinn) is an American living and teaching in post World War I England.  He has written a book debunking ghosts and the supernatural. He receives a letter from elderly Nanny Tess who lives at Edbrook estate with the Mariell family- siblings Christina, Robert and Simon, begging him to visit to help her figure out what is haunting her at the estate.

David goes to Edbrook and discovers that the three Mariell siblings have a rather peculiar relationship.  They seem a little too close.  David takes a liking to the highly flirtatious Christina much to the dismay of overbearing older brother Robert.  None of the family believes what Nanny is seeing is real.  David doesn't at first but little by little he starts to also see and encounter unexplained phenomena on the estate.  He also starts to see sightings of his twin sister who died when he was young.  Is he haunted by something at the house or just haunted by events in his past?

This is a great haunted house movie.  Lots of roaming around the large mansion and estate.  There is a good scary atmosphere throughout and it will keep you in suspense until the unexpected end.

Sweet, Sweet Rachel

"Sweet, Sweet Rachel" (1971) is an ABC Movie of the Week horror / thriller starring  Alex Dreier, Pat Hingle, Louise Latham and Stefanie Powers.

Rachel Stanton (Powers) returns home to her palatial seaside mansion one evening to watch in horror her husband, seemingly in a trance, run toward and through the window to die on the seaside rocks below.  She then receives a phone call from a mysterious female voice reciting all the cards that are spread out on the table.

Filled with grief, Rachel seeks the help of ESP expert, Dr. Lucas Darrow (Dreier) to help her solve the mystery.  In the meantime, she starts seeing visions of things and feeling a power that is making her do things she doesn't want to do.  The Dr. and Rachel both believe someone used ESP to kill her husband and to go after her.

Out of the blue, Rachel's aunt and uncle Arthur and Lillian Piper show up at Rachel's house and insist on staying so they can take care of her during her time of need.  Their daughter Nora, who was in love with Rachel's husband, also keeps popping up.  Lillian has psychic powers of her own and Dr. Darrow is immediately suspicious of the aunt, especially after they start keeping her in the house for her own good and keep the doctor away from her.

This is a good made for TV thriller.  Stephanie Powers does a great job as a woman being assaulted from psychic forces.  There are lots of shadows and a wonderfully mysterious setting and atmosphere that permeates the movie.  Plus, it keeps you guessing until the end!

Five Desperate Women

"Five Desperate Women" is a 1971 made for TV movie that aired as an ABC Movie of the Week, starring: Robert Conrad, Anjanette Comer, Bradford Dillman, Joan Hackett, Denise Nicholas, Stefanie Powers and Julie Sommars.

Years after graduating from a private college, five friends reconnect for a reunion by chartering a boat to take them to a remote island off the coast of California where they will stay at an isolated seaside house.  The only inhabitants of the island are the five women: Lucy, Dorian, Joy, Gloria and Mary Grace as well as two men: the caretaker Michael & the boat captain Jim.  Unbeknownst to the women, there is a maniacal killer on the loose from the local insane asylum who at the beginning of the film kills a man on the beach and steals his clothes which have the island resort's company logo.

 The women are each taking a break from the lives they have ended up with since college.  At the beginning they all make it appear that each is doing well but little by little the truth surfaces and we learn that their lives aren't so happy after all.  When one of the women is found strangled in her bed, this makes the other four even more desperate to get off the island and away from the two men - one of which has to be the murderer.  Just when they try to get away, the boat explodes and the suspicions grow.

Will the four remaining women make it out alive?  Will they learn new things about themselves and their lives and be able to pick up the pieces if they make it out?  This is a pretty standard made for TV thriller that nevertheless is fun to watch.  

The Stone Tape

"The Stone Tape" (1972) is a British TV movie starring Michael Bryant, Jane Asher, Iain Cuthbertson  about an electronics company research team that moves its lab into a haunted old building.

Brilliant and erratic Peter Brock (Bryant) leads a research team for Ryan Electronics.  The team is trying to discover the next storage medium other than cassette tape. The scientists and computer programmers include Jill Greeley (Asher) who immediately takes a dislike to the house.  When they go to see the progress of the storage room, they find out from Roy Collinson (Cuthbertson) that the workers wouldn't finish it because they were scared of something.  Jill immediately starts hearing screams and calls for help and seeing visions.  She eventually convinces the others that there's something in that stone room.

Jill feeds the information into a computer program she has developed and comes to believe that what is seen and heard in that room is a psychic impression that is encoded on the stone walls.  Peter believes this to be the discovery they have been waiting for and diverts the team's resources to studying this phenomenon and trying to figure out how to apply it to something they can sell. In his zeal for success, he drives the rest of the team toward madness.

"The Stone Tape" is a pretty good TV movie about not your typical haunted house.  It even tries to explain using scientific theory how hauntings occur.  It's characters are pretty good and it's good to see a brilliant female lead in a scientific/technical role.

Nightmare

"Nightmare" (1964) is a Hammer horror/thriller starring:  David Knight, Moira Redmond and Jennie Linden.  

Janet, a teenager who goes to a private boarding school has some issues.  Her mother is in an insane asylum because she stabbed Janet's father.  Janet has recurring nightmares of her mother and of herself doing horrible things.  She is afraid she has inherited her mother's madness.  She leaves school early and returns under the watchful eye of her schoolteacher Mary Lewis to her family home.

Her guardian Henry Baxter has arranged a nurse named Grace Maddox to be there.  Shortly after arriving, Janet continues to have dreams that she can't decide are dreams or reality. She also keeps seeing a scar faced woman in white that glides around the house.  Poor Janet seems to be going mad, or is she being driven mad?

This film takes an unexpected turn a little over halfway through.  This is good, suspenseful thriller that will keep you guessing until the end.  

The Conjuring

"The Conjuring" (2013) starring Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston is based on the true case records of demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren.  It's the truly frightening account of the haunting of the Perron family's old country house in Rhode Island.

The Perron family, Carolyn (Taylor) & Roger (Livingston) and their five daughters, moves from the big city to an old farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island.  Not long after arriving, strange things start happening that no one can explain.  The family dog won't go into the house.  All the clocks stop at 3:07 each morning.  The youngest daughter starts talking to a friend only she can see.  Another daughter keeps having her feet grabbed in the middle of the night.  Carolyn wakes up each morning with new bruises on her body.  Plus, the family discovers a boarded up door to the cellar filled with an old piano and other furniture and cast offs from previous families.  The hauntings continue to escalate until the family with no one else to turn to, seeks the help of demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren.

Ed (Wilson) and Lorraine (Farmiga) Warren are a husband wife team of psychic and supernatural researchers who have solved many so called hauntings and documented some real ones too.  Lorraine is a clairvoyant who can sense spirits.  The Warren's initial investigation into the Perron home leads them to believe it needs an exorcism to get rid of the bad spirit that haunts the house after deaths there centuries ago.  In order to convince the Catholic church to conduct an exorcism, they must gather documented evidence of the haunting or possession.  It is that investigation that takes place during the movie.

"The Conjuring" is a real old fashioned type of haunted house, supernatural horror movie that uses all the types of scares one would expect and much more.  The tension slowly builds as the hauntings escalate and the use of scary sounds, sights and atmosphere add to the general creepiness of this movie.  If you are in the mood for a good haunted house ghost story without all the blood and gore, check this movie out.  You won't be disappointed and you will definitely be scared!