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Private Notes
Vincent Price has one of his juiciest roles in this haunted-house thriller as millionaire playboy Frederick Loren, who invites five guests out to a genuine haunted house, offering them each $10,000 if they spend the night. Severed heads, a skeleton, an acid vat, ghostly screams, and a noose that creeps around on its own and strangles unsuspecting victims are just some of the treats in a film that has been spooking delighted audiences on late-night TV for decades.
Seven people secluded in a Pennsylvania farmhouse face relentless attacks by reanimated corpses seeking to eat their flesh. The group, which includes a married couple and their daughter, a pair of young lovers, and an African-American man, try to keep their sanity as the living dead try endlessly to enter the house.
A boorish doctor who has devised a way to bring the dead back to life gets into a car accident and kills his beautiful fiancee; he takes her severed head back to the lab with him and keeps it alive in a tray of serum. She is unhappy with the situation and begs him to let her die, but he embarks upon a search for the perfect body for his amour, visiting strip clubs and streetwalkers and scouring the city. Meanwhile, the fiancee discovers that a side effect of her current status is telepathy, and she begins to communicate with the doctor's "mistake," which is held captive in a locked room off the lab. With the monster's help, the bodyless woman manages to save the life of the doctor's chosen victim and burn the lab down in the process.
Jonathan Haze stars as clumsy assistant florist Seymour, who saves his job in Mr. Mushnik's skid-row flower shop when he brings in a unique man-eating plant. The problem is, it's a very hungry plant; every night it opens its huge jaws and demands to be fed, forcing poor Seymour to take to the street in search of victims, lest he disappoint his boss and his adoring girlfriend, Audrey (Jackie Joseph).
Made in 1962 in Lawrence, Kansas for very little money, Harvey's CARNIVAL OF SOULS has become legendary for it's ability to create a tensely creepy atmosphere with virtually no special effects. A young woman (Hilligoss) is involved in a car crash when her car falls off a bridge while drag racing with some friends. After she pulls herself from the river, she moves to a new town to take a job as a church organist. Meanwhile, a distinctly eerie and hollow-faced man in a black suit seems to be following her wherever she goes. The effective organ score enhances the film to great effect.
Francis Ford Coppola's directorial debut, produced by horror king Roger Corman, is a terror-filled tale of family ties chopped to pieces. Set in a spooky Irish castle, DEMENTIA 13 begins as the Haloran family gathers to memorialize the death of the youngest sister, Kathleen. While various family members plot and connive, an ax murderer is terrorizing the grounds, and Kathleen's body shows up at just the wrong time. Slowly, the family members become increasingly suspicious of each other--as well as of the ghosts that haunt the castle. But when the sinister family doctor is called in to help with the mystery, the expertly planned Coppola chills really take hold.
A group of criminals, led by the ruthless Alexander Ward (Wolff), hatch a plan to steal gold bars from a bank vault in Deadwood, South Dakota. Ward sends one of his henchmen, Marty (Sinatra), to set an explosive in a nearby gold mine; the detonation will act as a diversion for their heist. Although Marty, accompanied by a local barmaid (Linné Ahlstrand), succeeds in setting the explosive, he encounters a beast (Chris Robinson) in the mine. The beast kills the barmaid, but Marty escapes with his life.
The next morning, the explosive goes off as planned, and Marty and his gang succeed in stealing gold bars from the vault. They set off to a remote cabin, led by a local guide named Gil Jackson (Forest), where they hope to be picked up by a plane. Gil is initially unaware of their plans, but he becomes suspicious when he hears reports of the robbery on the radio and discovers that they're carrying handguns. They reach the cabin without incident, but once there, a violent snowstorm delays the plane's arrival. Marty's "secretary" Gypsy (Sheila Noonan) is taken by the young Gil and tells him that Marty plans to kill him once the plane arrives. Gil and Gypsy take off back to town together.
Marty, who still carries unpleasant memories of his encounter with the beast, has all the while been concerned about being followed. He encounters the beast again during the trip to the cabin, but his companions think he's losing his mind. Eventually, however, they become convinced of the beast's reality when they see it attack Marty's other henchman, Byron (Wally Campo). Despite their fear of further attacks, the gang is set on tracking down Gil and Gypsy before they reach town, so they head to a nearby cave. Another snowstorm forces Gil and Gypsy to take shelter in the cave as well, which turns out to be the lair of the beast. In the final struggle, the beast kills the remaining gang members, but Marty shoots it with a flare gun before he dies. Gil and Gypsy are left to watch as t
In the Florida Everglades, a pair of larger-than-human, intelligent leeches are living in an underwater cave. They begin dragging local people down to their cave where they hold them prisoner and slowly drain them of blood.
One of the first victims is the local vixen, Liz Walker, played by Yvette Vickers. After a couple of gratuitous displays of flesh (Vickers appeared as the centerfold in the July 1959 issue of Playboy), and some running around on her husband (Bruno VeSota), Liz finds herself a prisoner of the leeches along with her current paramour. Game warden Steve Benton (Ken Clark) sets out to investigate their disappearance. Aided by his girlfriend, Nan Grayson (Jan Sheppard), and her father, Doc Grayson, he discovers the cavern.
The monsters are finally destroyed when Steve, Doc, and some state troopers blow up the cavern with dynamite.
An expedition from Tokyo heads to Obelisk Island, which the greedy Mr. Funazu, president of "Playmate Magazine", wants to turn into a resort. The natives of Obelisk welcome the expedition, but two members, Hiroshi and Itoko, venture into a forbidden area despite the pleas of a native boy named Saki. They enter a cavern blocked by a fallen statue and find a giant egg, out of which hatches a baby monster, a "bird-lizard", referred to as a "Gappa". The natives plead with the skeptical scientists not to take the baby away, lest it anger the baby's parents. Sure enough, they take the baby away, and soon, inside the caverns, its two parents rise from the underground waters beneath the volcano, destroying everything in their path. Saki, the only survivor, is rescued by an American navy fleet and brought back to Japan.
Meanwhile, back in Japan, the baby "bird-lizard" is making world headlines, not to mention being experimented on by scientists. To the shock of the expedition members there is news of two giant flying creatures appearing over Sagami Bay. The Gappa parents ravage cities looking for their offspring, and are impervious to military weapons. Hiroshi, Itoko and Professor Tonooka (a scientist from the expedition) realize that the "Gappas" aren't a legend after all. They, and Saki, try to convince the headstrong Mr. Funazu to let go of the baby and return it to its parents.
Captain Thorne Sherman and first mate Rook Griswold deliver supplies by boat to a group on a remote island. The group, consisting of scientist Marlowe Cragis, his research assistant Radford Baines, the scientist's daughter Ann, her recent fiancé Jerry Farrel, and a servant Mario, welcome the captain and his first mate, but subtly resist the visitors staying overnight, even though a hurricane approaches. Thorne goes with the group to their compound. Griswold stays with the boat, to come ashore later.
The viewer progressively understands that the situation in the compound is less than safe. During evening cocktails, Thorne becomes aware of a life-threatening situation. Marlowe Cragis performs well-meaning research on serums and uses shrews as test animals. The doctor's purpose is to make humans half-size in order to reduce world hunger; smaller humans will eat less food on a planet with a limited food supply. Unfortunately, the doctor's experiments created mutant giant shrews that escaped and are reproducing outside the compound, growing larger by the day. The scientist and his staff barricade themselves inside their compound each evening.
Thorne and Ann begin to fall in love, causing jealousy in Jerry. Meanwhile, outside the compound, the giant shrews, which have a poisonous bite, are running out of smaller animals to eat. The shrews (dogs with glued-on fur and screen shots of rapidly shaking, stuffed heads with large fangs) attack and kill Griswold. The giant shrews close in on the compound and break in through the basement. Thorne and Mario investigate the basement. Mario is bitten by the shrew, but Thorne shoots and kills it. The others arrive in the basement, but Mario dies. Radford discovers a highly toxic venom in the shrew saliva, the result of poison bait he had placed in an attempt to kill the shrews. Another shrew breaks in and kills Radford. From outside the compound, the shrews begin to chew through the compound walls on the main floor. The shrews
In Hill's prologue, a scientist, Dr. Eric Zinthrop (Michael Mark), is fired from his job at a honey farm for experimenting with wasps.
The founder and owner of a large cosmetics company, Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot), is disturbed when her firm's sales begin to drop after it becomes apparent to her customer base that she is aging. Zinthrop has been able to extract enzymes from the royal jelly of the queen wasp that can reverse the aging process. Janice agrees to fund further research, at great cost, provided she can serve as his human subject. Displeased with the slowness of the results, she breaks into the scientist's laboratory after hours and injects herself with extra doses of the formula. Zinthrop becomes aware that some of the test creatures are becoming violent and goes to warn Janice, but before he can reach anyone, he gets into a car accident. He is thus temporarily missing and Janice goes through great trouble to find him, eventually taking over his care.
Janice continues her clandestine use of the serum and sheds 20 years in a single weekend, but soon discovers that she is periodically transformed into a murderous, wasp-like creature. Eventually, Zinthrop throws a jar of carbolic acid at her face, and another character uses a chair to push her out of a window, killing her.
Elvira's Halloween Special is a 1986 TV special for MTV hosted by Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. The special included skits with Elvira as well as music videos.
The story concerns a psychiatrist, Dr. Allen Barnes (Stevens), who obtains a mysterious ancient tribal mask. Whenever he puts on the mask, Barnes experiences dream-like visions which become increasingly disturbing and violent. The visions begin to alter Barnes' personality, and eventually drive him insane.
In order to make her Christmas complete, Elvira takes action in finding her perfect Christmas tree, only to run into her ghoulish friends and Santa Clause in this short claymation adventure.
This 1984 Halloween celebration is hosted by Elvira, with guests John Carradine, Laraine Newman, Todd Rundgren, and Cheech Marin.
