The House on Skull Mountain is pretty much everything you want in ’70s cinema: stylistic horror, blaxploitation, Victor French with a porn ’stache. The story goes that an old, Haitian, voodoo priestess has died in her mansion atop a mountain (shaped like a skull, natch) in eastern Georgia (look for it in finer guide books right next to Stone Mountain). She leaves the place and a couple of eerie servants to a quartet of distant relations: prim Lorena (Janee Michelle), jive-talking Phillippe (Mike Evans), God-fearing Harriet (Xernona Clayton) and inexplicably white Andrew (French).

The movie, of course, realizes that Andrew’s racial heritage needs accounting for and explains that that’s actually why he’s there. He was adopted and is jumping at the chance to learn about his real family. Unfortunately, he runs late to the reading of the will, and the lawyer’s not set to return for another week. Plenty of time for everyone to settle in and start dying.

Phillipe is a creepy fool who drunkenly hits on Cousin Lorena; Harriet is a timid housemaid who sees visions of death. Lorena and Andrew quickly form a relationship that may or may not be romantic (I choose “not,” because it allows me to continue judging Phillipe while still liking the two leads), giving this House some appeal that it probably doesn’t deserve. There’s nothing overtly sexual in the way they act around each other; they’re just extremely comfortable in one another’s company and encourage each other in more ways than simply trying to stay alive. There’s a particularly sweet scene where Andrew complains about not knowing anything about himself: “I don’t even know what color I am.”

“Oh, Andrew. Is that really important?”

“You know that it’s not,” he says. Convincingly, too. “But I’d like to know.”

It’s nice to see since they were so obviously lonely people before they showed up in voodoo country. I’m not sure that Georgia actually is voodoo country, but we’ll run with it. At any rate, the sweetness of their relationship raises the stakes for both Andrew and the audience when Lorena becomes the next to be drummed out. —Michael May

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I am not a fan of hospitals. I can’t take three steps into one without being overcome with a wave of anxious nausea, keenly aware that somewhere in that building — far closer than I’d like — someone is drawing his or her last breath. Ironically, it’s that same anxiety that draws me to hospital-set and medical-themed horror movies, since they allow me to face my fear without risk or consequence. Having seen a lot of them, I can comfortably say that the 1982 Canadian-made Visiting Hours ranks near the top of the list.

While it admittedly never exploits its setting as effectively as Boaz Davidson’s Hospital Massacre, it manages to avoid descending into the ridiculous camp that mars that otherwise interesting effort and, more importantly, creates sympathetic characters we want to see live, rather than die — the hallmark of every successful horror movie.

The film stars Michael Ironside as a misogynist maniac on a mission to kill the popular female broadcaster (Lee Grant) who has taken on the cause of a battered woman unjustly convicted of murdering her abusive husband. When his initial attack on her is thwarted, he returns to the hospital to finish the job, but only manages to kill a bunch of other people before she is able to use his own knife to end his deadly spree.

Directed with style and tension by Jean-Claude Lord, Visiting Hours succeeds thanks to effective performances from its talented cast, which also includes William Shatner as Grant’s producer, and Linda Purl as the young, single mom/nurse who finds herself also stalked by Ironside after she witnesses him leaving the scene of one of his crimes. —Allan Mott

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Not to be confused with the horse-fucking documentary of the same name, Japan’s Zoo is a horror anthology culled from the works of the country’s uni-monikered Otsuichi, presumably a Stephen King of sorts. You wouldn’t know this from the film, which has no wraparound story or any system of linkage, nor the freaky, faceless guide pictured on its cover, which it could use. Each helmed by different directors, the five tales vary in length, style and quality; only one is excellent, while another is an utter chore.

“Kazari and Yoko” is a solid opener, a tale of two sisters who couldn’t be more different, despite being twins. Kazari is beautiful and doted upon by their mother; Yoko is treated literally like a dog and often abused. One day, Yoko decides to play a trick, and it’s as crafty as the segment overall. By contrast, the closing story, “Zoo,” is the worst of a bunch. Its elongated plot finds a guy killing his girlfriend at an abandoned zoo, then returning every day to take a Polaroid of her maggoty corpse so he can make a flipbook. It also has something to do with a zebra, and it doesn’t help that it’s purposely shot on ultra-grainy video.

“So Far” is a quasi-ghost story that goes on too long, with a twist that mitigates any power. It examines what happens when an only child’s parents are killed in a car crash, but return as ghosts, only unable to be seen or heard by the other spouse. “The Poem of Collected Sunlight” stands out, but only because it’s animated. The two-character bit is like the Frankenstein myth rendered as a tonal piece.

“Seven Rooms” makes the entire film worthy of existence, as a little boy and his older sister awake in a locked room with a dirt floor and concrete walls, with no recollection of getting there, nor much hope for escape. It’s like a combination of Cube and those ones with the chainsaw. Now, nothing about “Seven Rooms” (or any of Zoo, for that matter) is scary, but it’s packed with mystery, suspense and ingenuity — elements most of the other segments severely lack. —Rod Lott

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Ritual was supposed to follow 1995’s Demon Knight and 1996’s Bordello of Blood into theaters as the third in a trilogy of Tales from the Crypt movies. But it didn’t, finally premiering on DVD, and that’s because Ritual is shit-ual. Trust me: You’ll be praying for the return of Dennis Miller.

In this remake of Val Lewton’s classic I Walked with a Zombie, a post-schnozz-job Jennifer Grey portrays Dr. Alice, who, after having her medical license suspended for two years, accepts an advertised hospice position in Jamaica. Once there, she wonders if maybe she hadn’t made a rash decision: “Why does everyone carry machetes?”

Her employer, Craig Sheffer, explains his crazy brother (Daniel Lapaine) believes he’s a zombie. With so much voodoo afoot, lots of hallucinations are experienced in this ridiculously routine shocker: crawling spiders, moving trees, crashing ceiling, Medusa hair and so on. Holy shit, does Grey sure scream a lot. But she has no Principal Rooney to kick in the face immediately thereafter, which makes a huge difference.

That’s because a solid sense of humor is sorely missing; other than the slapped-on opening featuring the Cryptkeeper in dreadlocks, in no way does it ever feel like a Crypt film, much less a Crypt episode. I did like the necrophilia gag, but that’s the last shot of the movie. That’s right: Not even the Cryptkeeper could be bothered to show up and say goodbye. (The post-credit fake bloopers — complete with fart joke — don’t count.) —Rod Lott

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You know that rock musical for the stage? The one that begins with a mop-headed hooker being pulled into an alley by a man in a giant owl head who does flips? And a Marilyn Monroe lookalike playing the sax while her dress billows up? No? Good, because it only exists in Stagefright, so you passed the liar test.

The Italian horror film follows the foibles of the cast and crew attempting to mount this ambitious production. Rehearsals aren’t going great, and that’s before their troupe is infiltrated by a crazed killer. A wardrobe lackey is the first to be murdered (in the face!), and the director eats up the idea of using the publicity to his advantage, because he’s in dire need of a hit.

That’s before he and the thesps get locked in the theater with the killer, who’s now using the aforementioned owl head as his trademark, so take that, hockey mask! Members of the musical get stabbed, drilled, sawed and axed, and they all wonder who, who could it be? (That’s an owl pun.) Meanwhile, the oblivious cops sit outside, talking about James Dean and Popeye.

With its behind-the-scenes setting most of us never see, Stagefright feels more unique than it would otherwise. (The owl head doesn’t hurt, either.) As with many ’80s Italian horrors, it’s heavily stylized — read: MTV-influenced and, therefore, awfully and wonderfully dated. Director Michele Soavi (The Church) hails from the Dario Argento school of filmmaking, so people bleed and get torn apart in graphically gruesome ways. It’s slow as first, but once the killings started, I was prepped to cry, “Bravo! Bravo!” —Rod Lott

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