Bite me: THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)

As I do every year the last week of October and including Halloween (October 31st), I binge watch horror movies. There is a variation some years as to what I watch and this year is no exception. I watched a Hammer Films produced horror movie that I hadn't seen in many years: THE BRIDES OF DRACULA, originally released in January, 1960. The film's cast includes Peter Cushing, Freda Jackson, David Peel and gorgeous Yvonne Monlaur.

Dracula is nowhere to be found in THE BRIDES OF DRACULA...but a young baron who has inherited the vampire affliction, after escaping home confinement (his mother has him chained inside a room inside a huge castle), sets about doing what Dracula and vampires in general typically do: terrorize folks and bite them in order to spread their "disease". If vampirism is in fact a disease then Dr. Gabriel Van Helsing is the cure and Peter Cushing reprises his role as the vampire hunter-killer "Van Helsing" (he began the role in 1958's Horror Of Dracula).

THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960) can be found for sale on both DVD and Blu Ray as part of respective box sets that feature other classic Hammer horror films. I have both sets and they're fantastic. Here's a link to the Blu Ray set: Hammer 8-film collection

A trailer:

When the lights go out: THE DARK(1979)

Every now and then while I'm browsing Amazon Prime Video, I'll randomly pick a movie I've never seen before and watch it. Since we're in October I figured I'd check out a horror film and the one I decided on was THE DARK, originally released to theaters in 1979. Tobe Hooper, who directed horror meat-grinders The Texas Chainsaw Massacre(1974) and Eaten Alive(1976), was the original director for THE DARK but John Cardos later stepped in and took over directorial duties.

This film's plot is fairly straight forward: someone or something (and not surprisingly it turns out to be non human) begins a bloody rampage on the streets of Los Angeles at night, killing in grisly and gruesome fashion, many of the victims getting their heads ripped off. The police, including a hard bitten and world weary detective, are clueless as to who (or what) is doing the killings. As pressure from the mayor, a local female reporter joins local law enforcement in the search for the killer. How would I describe the killer? Definitely extraterrestrial but walks like a grown man, has the face of the Frankenstein monster and a hostile, angry growl that is part human with irritable bowel syndrome and part something else altogether. The creature killer also has glowing eyes that can emit lethal, laser like energy beams which annihilate anyone unfortunate to be hit by them.

The cast includes William Devane, Richard Jaeckel, Cathy Lee Crosby and Keenan Wynn. Code Red released 1000 copies of this film on Blu Ray(Region 0/widescreen) and I've found Blu Rays of this movie on eBay BUT they are pricey since the Blu Ray release of THE DARK was limited. DVDs can be bought on Amazon of this film but they're in full frame(1:33.1) aspect ratio and look about as good as the full frame version I watched on Amazon Video which wasn't really that good. Any horror and/or sci-fi fan who hasn't seen THE DARK(1979) should check it out. It's not great but it is much better than I expected.

An HD trailer:

A howling good time: short werewolf film based on the 'Morbach monster"