John reilly susan and their daughter come face to face with terror when they travel to italy and move into a castle they have inherited. They soon discover it is haunted by a blood thirsty creature and john must uncover a dark secret to save his family. Studio: E1 Entertainment Release Date: 08/27/2002 Starring: Jeffrey Combs Barbara Crampton Run time: 95 minutes Rating: R Director: Stuart Gordon

John Reilly (Jeffrey Combs) has come to Italy with wife and blind daughter in tow to arrange for the sale of his newly inherited castle. Unbeknownst to these folks, the duchess who willed the castle to Reilly kept her kid shackled in the dungeon, lambasting him regularly with a wicked cat-o’-nine-tails. Though the duchess is gone, the eponymous freak remains, now fully grown. As the family moves into the castle to await its sale, internal conflicts concerning Reilly’s guilt over the blinding of the daughter, and the blame from his wife, further fracture their unstable family unit. Castle Freak escapes his shackles in search of food, and more importantly human warmth. The Freak just doesn’t know how to express his need for love in a socially acceptable way, however, and seems destined for an unsavory end at the hands of the something-to-prove Reilly, who must find some way to route to vicious creature. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat (though they only use one of those ways in this picture). Fitting addition to the oeuvre of splatter specialist Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator). –Jim Gay

Italian shock maven Lucio Fulci directed this effort, undoubtedly one of his seediest and most offensive films. A serial killer prowls the streets of New York, preying strictly on women and butchering them in the most sadistic ways (usually starting at the crotch). The cops are always several steps behind the killer, who uses a Donald Duck voice to taunt them (and his prospective victims) over the phone. It’s all pretty misogynistic, violent, and brutal, and adds up to an unsavory viewing experience. That said, the plot hangs together fairly well (better than in much of the giallo genre), and Fulci’s camera work and editing are topnotch. The director’s sense of color and shot composition are in line with much of contemporaries Dario Argento and Mario Bava’s work (the color red in particular dominates much of the movie). As with Argento’s work, an unassuming woman, caught up in circumstances, turns out to be the film’s heroine. Also, it’s interesting that both in this film and in Don’t Torture a Duckling, Fulci uses Donald Duck as a sort of bizarre totem of shattered innocence and tragedy. Still, Fulci uses his camera here in such a leering, lascivious way that it reinforces the film’s oppressive sleaziness and sadism. Fans of Italian horror won’t be disappointed with The New York Ripper, but be advised that the movie’s overriding unpleasantness makes it an acquired taste at best. –Jerry Renshaw

Men Behind The Sun is the true story of the Japanese prison camp, Manchu 731, where people were subjected to tremendous horrors. This film is very powerful and hard to watch but it’s a film that should be seen by everyone, to show the fact that there were more victims that suffered during World War 2 than most people are aware of. Near the end of WW2, Japan is losing the war so a prison camp is created to test new biological and chemical weapons that might be able to help them win. In order to test these new weapons, the Japanese need to use test subjects, so they capture and use Chinese and Russians as guinea pigs for their cruel and barbaric experiments. The Japanese refer to the test subjects as Maruta, which translates to the word material. We follow the experiments performed on the Maruta by the crazy leader who runs the prison camp and a group of young boys that are enrolled in the camp but they cannot stand to deal with this cruelty. Although all 731 prison camp members disappeared into the darkness and all of the witnesses & records were destroyed, the bloody story of the devil 731 Bacterial Camps marked the immortal history of true and real, cruel and merciless evil. Includes Original Theatrical Trailer Written Director Interview Director Filmography

Studio: Media Blasters Inc. Release Date: 12/13/2005

Deranged: Ezra’s good at making friends… into home furnishings! Based on the same terrifying story that inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs, this hauntingly scary film chronicles the grisly exploits of a rural necrophiliac and murderer! Brace yourself for a “solid horror story” (Variety) that’s guaranteed to make you bite your nails… because if you don’t, Ezra will!Motel Hell: You really are what you eat with Farmer Vincent’s smoked meat in this creepy horror yarn that “packs a punch and goes way beyond mere terror” (Box Office)! Vincent’s popular products contain a special ingredient that the psychotic farmer and his sister would literally kill to keep secret in this darkly funny flick that “just might be your cup of meat” (L.A. Herald Examiner).

A double bill of rural schlock, with both entries gruesome but somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Deranged was inspired by the unsavory saga of Ed Gein, whose isolated madness oiled the gears of both Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This is a low-rent production all the way, but its shabby locations have a certain eerie authenticity, and it benefits greatly from the casting of the reliable character actor Roberts Blossom–a scarecrow in the American Gothic mold–in the lead role. Now and again a somber but vaguely amusing narrator wanders into the frame to remind us that we are watching the tale of “a necromaniac, a defiler of the dead,” as though we could forget. Serial-killer completists should check it out.Motel Hell is slicker but less effective. Former Western star Rory Calhoun plays Farmer Vincent, a country hotel keeper (free samples of jerky at the front desk) whose line of smoked meats turns his customers into unwitting cannibals. The movie’s got some genuinely creeped-out ideas (a backyard garden of victims, buried up to their necks?), but the execution is pedestrian and the humor pretty square. Onetime cultural icon Wolfman Jack has a few scenes as a TV preacher, for no apparent reason. –Robert Horton

TWO YOUNG COUPLES TAKE A MISGUIDED TOUR ONTO THE BACK ROADS OFAMERICA IN SEARCH OF A LOCAL LEGEND KNOWN AS DR. SATAN.LOST AND STRANDED, THEY ARE SET UPON BY A BIZARRE FAMILY OFPSYCHOTICS.MURDER, CANNIBALISM, AND SATANINC RITUALS ARE JUST A FEW OF THE 1000+ HORRORS THAT AWAIT

It’s sick! It’s twisted! It’s House of 1,000 Corpses, and it’s more fun than a wholesome bowl of “Agatha Crispies”! Dropped by two studios (Universal and MGM) and doomed to obscurity until Lions Gate Films gave it a limited theatrical release, Rob Zombie’s gonzo horror flick is a blood-spattered throwback to the gore-fests of the ’70s, lending new meaning to the term “box-office gross.” Most critics misunderstood this unbridled exercise in graphic style and violence, but for devoted horror buffs it’s a refreshing rebuttal to the comparatively “polite” frights of the post-Scream era. While paying homage to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Last House on the Left, Motel Hell, and other gory classics, Zombie’s ramshackle plot (two young couples are terrorized by an inbred family of homicidal maniacs) lacks a crucial sense of dread, but his pastiche of vivid colors, grainy fetish-films, and photo-negative imagery is guaranteed to hold your attention. A bona-fide cult item, this House is definitely worth a visit… if you dare. –Jeff Shannon

When the Angel of Death impregnates a mortal woman, the dead stop dying. But these zombies are not out to destroy the living; their only desire is to return and be back among us. And now a bloody war has broken out between the living and the dead, bleeding the final survivors from our broken world. Amid this fetid landscape of zombie massacres rises Susan (Stark Raven), a lone woman desperate to get back to her boyfriend and a life of some sanity. And she’s not about to let anyone, living or undead, get in her way? New York Filmmaker Scooter McCrae’s (Sixteen Tongues) bold new take on the zombie genre won the prestigious Best U.S. Independent Feature Award at the Italian FANTAFILM Festival, which helped solidify its status as a modern horror cult classic. Are you ready to feel the Final Wraith of God?Features:
-Region 1
-Full Motion Menus
-Three Director and Crew/Talent Commentary
-Behind-the-Scenes Featurette
-Shock Reel/Trailers Sub Rosa Movies
-Original and Bonus Trailer
-Tour of the Shatter Dead House
-and more!

Following the worldwide success of SUSPIRIA and INFERNO, Master Of Horror Dario Argento returned to the giallo genre with the shocker that remains one of the director’s greatest. Anthony Franciosa stars as an American mystery novelist on a promotional tour in Rome who finds that his most recent book has inspired a copycat serial killer. When the psychotic impulse becomes irresistible, does freedom await in the simple act of annihilation? John Saxon (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET), Daria Nicolodi (DEEP RED) and John Steiner (CALIGULA) co-star along with a nerve-shredding score by Goblin and a mind-blowing twist ending in this classic of sexual corruption, savage bloodshed and virtuoso filmmaking that fans and critics hail as an Argento masterpiece.

After several excursions into supernatural horror, Dario Argento returned to the homicidal frenzy that made his reputation with this mystery that plays more like a grown-up slasher movie than a detective thriller. Anthony Franciosa stars as Peter Neal, a bestselling horror novelist whose promotional tour in Italy takes a terrible turn when a mysterious killer re-creates the brutal murders from his book with real-life victims. The first to die are so-called “deviants,” Neal’s own friends, and finally there comes a promise that the author himself is next on the list. Columbo it ain’t, but Argento has always been more concerned with style than story and his execution of the crimes is pure cinematic bravura. From the simple beauty of a straight razor shattering a light bulb (the camera catches the red-hot filament slowly blacking out) to an ambitious crane shot that creeps up and over the sides of a house under siege in a voyeuristic survey that would make Hitchcock proud, Argento turns the art of murder into a stylish spectacle. He even lets his kinkier side show with flashbacks of an adolescent boy and a teasing dominatrix in red stiletto heels that become a key motif of the film. The objects of Argento’s homicidal tendencies are traditionally lovely, scantily clad Italian beauties, and with self-deprecating humor he even inserts a scene in which Neal is taken to task for the misogynist violence of his stories–an accusation Argento himself has weathered for years. –Sean Axmaker

Stills from Tenebre (Click for larger image)

The Epic Zombie Shocker!Two traveling companions, George (Ray Lovelock of AUTOPSY) and Edna (Christine Galbo of THE KILLER MUST KILL AGAIN), come across a small town infested with the “living dead” that are satisfying their cannibalistic hunger on anyone they come across. Discovering that an agricultural machine using radiation waves is at the root of all the havoc, George and Edna fight for survival and their innocence as they are pursued by a relentless detective (Arthur Kennedy of THE ANTICHRIST and FANTASTIC VOYAGE) who is convinced they are responsible for the ghoulish acts of violence plaguing the countryside. All this leads to a gruesome showdown at the Manchester Morgue – an ending that knots a horrifying twist in the lives of all involved!

Also know as THE LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE and DON’T OPEN THE WINDOW, this carefully constructed and beautifully photographed tale of the undead roaming the English countryside comes from acclaimed Spanish Director Jorge Grau.

One of the best zombie shockers of the 1970s, this Spanish-Italian coproduction (also known as The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue and Don’t Open the Window, among other titles) is a real international affair. Inspired by George Romero’s genre-shattering American hit Night of the Living Dead, it was shot in England by a Spanish director with a largely British cast, and supplemented by Spanish zombies and American character actor Arthur Kennedy as a bitter Irish police detective (with only a hint of a brogue). He’s investigating a sudden rash of violent murders (the work of Satanists, he’s convinced) and closes in on a pair of newcomers to the sleepy Northern England town, longhaired antique dealer Ray Lovelock and his nervous traveling companion Christine Galbó. Only they know the real culprits: newly deceased corpses, revived by agricultural experiments in ultrasonic radiation that are also turning newborns into vicious little monsters. Director Jorge Grau delivers all the stumbling zombies and gory flesh feasts you could hope for in a 1974 movie, but more importantly he creates the rare zombie thriller that manages to be both scary and smartly done. Some of the twists are a bit more far-fetched than others (why does dabbing blood on the eyes of long-dead cadavers magically bring them to life, and how would a zombie even know to try?), but it’s a minor quibble in the face of the startling blood frenzy and Grau’s satisfying dark dramatic twists.The DVD also features an introduction and a 20-minute interview with Grau (“I hope you will suffer profoundly,” he jokes in the opening), as well as a gallery of posters and stills, TV ads, and radio spots. –Sean Axmaker