For the movies, Gaston Leroux’s opera-dwelling phantom has been a literary gift that keeps on giving. Witness Brian De Palma’s cult classic Phantom of the Paradise, the ’80s straight-to-VHS slasher Phantom of the Mall and the somewhat obscure The Phantom of Hollywood, a 1974 CBS movie of the week.

Without me telling you, you can guess its basic story points: The fictional Worldwide Studios has plans to demolish its backlot, which doesn’t sit well with the masked, mace-wielding figure who lives among its sets and subterranean tunnels. Once he gets wind of it, he leaves notes and makes calls to studio execs (Rat Packer Peter Lawford among them) that amount to outright threats of death: “To destroy the backlot is to destroy yourself!”

They ignore him; fatal “accidents” happen; the Phantom kidnaps a lovely woman (Skye Aubrey, The Carey Treatment); and things don’t go as smoothly as he planned.

Given our overexposure to Leroux’s plot, it’s not at all taxing to guess the identity of the Phantom. This is no detraction, however; its very familiarity is comforting and welcome. The pleasures of this Phantom, as with every twist-’em-up version, is seeing how the filmmakers will modernize each element of the original Opera. So what if this one is a little insidery and self-congratulatory? It does not fail to entertain, and does so efficiently, in fewer than 75 minutes.

It’s an added treat for old-school film buffs, as viewers not only see clips from celebrated movies like The Wizard of Oz, but also get good glimpses of the MGM backlot, which ironically, was being destroyed at the time. That might be the only reason this nifty telefilm exists. Regardless, I’m glad it does. —Rod Lott

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Featuring day for night, bad dubbing, sideburns, camera zooming, gratuitous nudity and other hallmarks of ’70s cinema, Lady Frankenstein is an ultra-schlocky take on the classic Mary Shelley narrative. The plot centers on Tania Frankenstein (Rosalba Neri, credited as Sara Bey), who returns home from medical school with the hopes of assisting her father Baron Frankenstein (veteran actor Joseph Cotten of Citizen Kane and The Third Man fame) in his unorthodox experiments with human reanimation.

The Baron tries to keep her out of the way, however, not wanting her to face any backlash should their grisly, “unholy” work ever get out. He continues working on his “creature” with his assistant, Dr. Marshall (Paul Muller), acquiring a recently hanged killer’s corpse from a local sleazy grave robber (Herbert Fux) and his cronies. 

On a stormy night, Frankenstein successfully reanimates his creature, despite Marshall warning him not to, given that the hanged killer’s brain had been damaged. This results in the monster — a gargantuan specimen with a bulbous bald head — to immediately rampage, killing Baron Frankenstein and escaping to the countryside, where unsuspecting villagers (several of them amorous couples) fall victim to its indiscriminate wrath.

Tania seems unconcerned by all of this, however, instead convincing Marshall — apparently in love with Tania — to kill a mentally handicapped stud named Thomas (Marino Masé, as Peter Whiteman) and allow her to transplant Marshall’s superior brain into Thomas’ younger, fitter body. Meanwhile, local cop Captain Harris (Mickey Hargitay, Mariska’s dad) suspects the Frankensteins have been up to no good, a sentiment shared by the townsfolk for no clear reason other than to include the requisite angry mob equipped with torches and pitchforks at the film’s climax. Without giving too much away, this we get in spades. 

To say this is an uneven film is an understatement, but its rockily paved roads still offer a thrilling, if altogether bumpy ride. It has the spirit of a gothic Hammer film — not as good as any of that studio’s Frankenstein entries, mind you, but just perverse and at times unintentionally goofy enough to hold interest. Sometimes, perversity and goofiness go hand in hand, perhaps none more so than in the scene where Marshall smothers Thomas with a pillow while he makes love to Tania, sending the lady into a fit of ecstasy. This sexual rapture during murder fits in with the film’s overall assertion that the Frankensteins are preternaturally evil.

Similarly, the Baron’s obsession with reanimating the dead seems rooted in a desire to achieve godlike status among his fellow mortals, not so much for any scientific aims. As such, the monster created by Frankenstein is just that: a marauding hulk imbued with “superhuman strength induced by lightning,” as Marshall puts it. If you’re looking for a nuanced depiction of the Creation, keep looking, because you won’t get it here. If you don’t care about all that and just want to see a brute kill a bunch of people, this is the movie for you. 

With its short runtime and emphasis on exploitation, Lady Frankenstein, despite its flaws, is a fun late-night flick sure to delight all but the most devout Shelley purists. —Christopher Shultz

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Apparently, Tenebrae is a religious service right before Easter where candles are extinguished in total darkness, or something to that effect. I guess that is a complacent title for Dario Argento’s return to the giallo realm of demonic horror after both Suspiria and Inferno … but I am bad with comparisons. Sorry.

Tenebrae has some serial strangeness coupled with a somewhat meandering plot but, thank heavens, Argento has a keen eye for engaging set pieces and the right amount of gore for the Fangoria crowd — original incarnation — that makes it a real-gone crowd-pleaser and a small-time chunk-blower.

Novelist Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa, who has a strong Christopher George vibe, if you know what I mean) comes to Italy to promote his bloody novel, Tenebrae. He is the type of guy who pedals to La Guida Airport to an international flight with several sexy sirens following in tandem.

Meanwhile, a heavy CPAP-breather is stalking nubile vixens in the Walmarts of Rome; eventually, he murders a petty shoplifter with pages of a book stuffed in her mouth and, of course, takes pictures for additional sleaze. I guess that kind of stuff makes him a bad dude.

Soon, the police partner with Neal after he starts receiving taunting phone calls. His handler (?) and her assistant (?) help him solve the crimes, which is both baffling and ridiculous. But with the sweeping crane shot in the pre-crime scene — you know the one — all is forgiven and the mystery is (somewhat) solved.

Of course, the glassy atmosphere is beautifully stilted, and it gives Argento’s productions that Technicolor shimmer that pops off the screen, better than a 3D movie (but not his Dracula 3D movie). With a menacing tone, while truly silly in some parts, is ultimately one of spaghetti-covered dread that really earns the wholly ludicrous ending.

And what can I say about the phenomenal score of Goblin, Argento’s house band (actually Claudio Simonetti), except that I truly rate it better than the actual movie? Check it out!

While some people say that Tenebrae is that last gasp of this horror master, at the time he had a real death grip on his audience and this film proves that even after Suspiria, he can still slay with the best of them. —Louis Fowler

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Alan Birkinshaw enjoys the distinction of directing two Edgar Allan Poe adaptations in South Africa in 1989: Masque of the Red Death and The House of Usher. But only one dared put Frank Stallone’s name atop its poster!

It wasn’t this one.

Set in the present day, Birkinshaw’s House opens with Ryan Usher (Rufus Swart, River of Death) and his fiancée, Molly (Romy Windsor, Howling IV: The Original Nightmare), being invited to the titular, palatial estate by his enigmatic uncle, Roderick Usher (Oliver Reed, Burnt Offerings). Despite never having met the guy, Ryan and Molly go anyway.

Ulterior motive alert: Being the last of his lineage, Ol’ Roderick feels an urgent need to seed, and views Molly as his perfect bride/birthing vessel. Like Olive Garden, Roderick operates from the mindset of “When you’re here, you’re family,” assuming Olive Garden still performs mandatory pelvic floor exams at the table.  

That’s just the start of the craziness under this House’s roof. A visiting physician loses his penis to a gnawing rat. Living in a hidden room, a sooty Donald Pleasence (Nothing Underneath) has an electric drill bolted to his forearm. Going so hammy that Jewish and Muslim populations may be forbidden from viewing, Reed’s Roderick humps Molly in the shower with pained thrusts that suggest he’s struggling to move a divan up a flight of stairs.

The travails of a Harry Alan Towers budget are apparent, with the Usher estate’s interior rather cramped, dressed and blocked like a sitcom set. (Somehow, the place looked more spacious in Masque.) Elsewhere, in the family crypt, stone tombs are clearly Styrofoam. More gaudy than Gothic, this House of Usher falls in on itself in credibility, especially with one of those “JK!” cheat endings. —Sir Roderick Lott 

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Young web journalist Kim (Kim Bo-ra, Ghost Mansion) is in dire need of a scoop that’ll rake in the clicks and likes. She finds it in a subway train accident, when her friend Woo-won (Kim Jae-Hyun), who works security at Korea Metro, tells her about the ghost of a little girl spotted hiding in the rails of Oksu station.

Strangely, the ghost girl isn’t the only spirit hanging around Oksu. Stranger still, they all spout four-digit numbers when asked for their names. The more Kim digs, the more she uncovers, like how everyone who’s died at that platform in the last three decades bears deep scratches on their arms. Then there’s the matter of one of Kim’s sources committing suicide … before the two spoke!

The Ghost Station marks director Jeong Yong-Ki’s return to horror since his 2004 debut, The Doll Master. Unfortunately, it’s your standard Korean fright fare — substandard, even, if you’ve seen more of these things than the average bear. As if “ghost children” didn’t already drive the point home, it doesn’t tread new territory as much as repeat the familiar tropes by rote. Co-screenwriter Takahashi Hiroshi, best-known for the J-horror classic Ringu (aka The Ring) even has the gall to include a well. A well! With trapped kids! Thus creating, to use the movie’s own words, a grudge! And a curse to pass on, which Kim totally girlbosses.  

Shouldn’t some blame land on the unimonikered Horang, on whose webcomic the film is based? No, since his source material is adapted in whole for the prologue. Other than establishing the subway setting, the standalone scene shares nothing with the mélange of jump scares that follows. —Rod Lott

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