Macabre is Lamberto Bava’s first solo directing credit and it arrived in the year of his more famous father’s (Mario Bava) death. The film is late giallo and lacks many of the genre’s traditional touches, but Lamberto manages the suspense well and delivers some genuinely creepy moments.

Bernice Stegers stars as Jane Baker, a New Orleans wife and mother who leaves her kids in the care of the yard man one morning so she can tryst with her lover, Frank. While the two of them are playing Ride ‘Em Cowboy, her adolescent daughter (Veronica Zinny) drowns her little brother in the bathtub. Someone calls Jane, who gets Frank to drive her home. On the way, they’re involved in a freak accident and Frank loses his head. Literally.

One year later, Jane is released from an asylum and moves into the old house where she and Frank used to meet. The blind landlord, Robert (Stanko Molnar), who has a crush on her, is glad she’s back until he starts hearing the sounds of passion issuing from her apartment as she calls out Frank’s name.

At varying points, the movie could become a ghost story, a psycho kid story, a creepy landlord story, or a nutty woman in the upstairs apartment story. Actually, it blends elements from all of them together. Unfortunately, Bava gives in to the temptation of tossing in a last-second kicker designed to shock that just doesn’t work and futzes with the story as we expect it to end. Bad move.

Filmed in New Orleans, the flick lets us see parts of the city that aren’t the French Quarter, and that’s nifty. It’s a near-miss that works for 88.5 minutes out of 89. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

Having given birth to the modern zombie genre with Night of the Living Dead, George A. Romero further explored the terrain in several sequels, including the fourth entry, Land of the Dead. So different are the films that he can never be accused of making the same movie twice; but this time, the result just isn’t all that good.

Working with a huge-for-him budget and some name actors, Land had every opportunity to be the “zombie masterpiece” as the ads touted. From the very first shot — a sly visual gag of a pointing diner sign reading “EATS” — you think Romero may very well pull it off. But then the camera slowly pans over to some kind of zombie oompha band. If we’re going to fault George Lucas for the Wookie’s Tarzan yell in Revenge of the Sith, we’ve gotta take Romero to task for this, too.

A thin story emerges: In one major metropolitan area, survivors live in a well-fortressed downtown area surrounded by rivers, barbed wire, electric fences and armed guards to keep the undead out. The rich among them live in a palatial skyscraper filled with fine dining, shopping and housing, all owned by the wealthy Dennis Hopper. He’s hired armies to roam the streets for the sole purpose of killing zombies.

Meanwhile, Gas Station Attendant Zombie has somehow learned to become smarter and corrals a whole mess of zombies to follow him to the gated community for some late-night snacks. Zombies attacking a skyscraper. That should be an awesome movie (and it was, almost, in Demons 2). But rather than deliver that, Romero would rather get preachy and political. Screw messages! Me want zombies! —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Well, you can’t hit one over the fence every time at bat. The House That Dripped Blood is the third of Amicus Productions’ portmanteau horror anthologies, and it’s at best a shaky single achieved as the result of a fielder’s error.

The script is by Robert Bloch and based on four of his short stories: “Method for Murder,” “Waxworks,” “Sweets to the Sweet” and “The Cloak.” The last two are classic Bloch, but here, the scripts are weakened, especially in “The Cloak,” by producer Max Rosenberg’s insistence on putting humor onscreen and keeping the horror off.

The cast makes the film sort of worth watching. Denholm Elliott stars in the first story, about a writer of horror stories who begins to think that his creations are coming to life. Peter Cushing and Joss Ackland are in segment two, about a creepy wax museum and the nutjob who operates it. Christopher Lee tops a tale of a man trying to live with an adolescent witch, and Jon Pertwee and Ingrid Pitt finish off with a comic vampire yarn.

The film contains no thrills or chills — not even a weak shiver — and is for Cushing/Lee fans only. Note that Vincent Price was originally offered, but turned down the role of the snotty, egotistical horror movie star eventually played by Pertwee. Price got his chance to burlesque hammy actors two years later in Theatre of Blood, and that one’s a must-see. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

I’ve never been able to stomach more than a minute of ei Independent Cinema’s softcore efforts, like Spider-Babe, The Lord of the G-Strings, Kinky Kong and Play-Mate of the Apes. Not being 13 years old, I don’t see the appeal. Surprise then, to see one that’s actually kinda clever, at least by their low standards: Shock-O-Rama.

It helps that it’s interested in a lot more than simulated lesbian sex scenes. Writer/director Brett Piper (perhaps most notable for They Bite) pays loving tribute to horror anthologies in a joyful, drive-in style. It’s like asking, “What if Grindhouse were made for $7.49? Plus tax?”

In the wraparound, Misty Mundae practically plays herself: a Z-grade movie actress. She’s fired by her producers, who then have to screen other films to find a new starlet to fill her void. Cue the stories, one involving aliens in a junkyard; the other, skanks undergoing a scientific experiment (that’s where most of the T&A lay, FYI).

The wraparound becomes a story in itself as Mundae resurrects — and then is pursued by — a zombie. The proceedings never take themselves seriously, which is wise considering the bar for acting is set pretty low. Piper pulls off some good effects, too, on an apparent Big Lots! budget. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

If you like horror movies and are familiar with the films of Barbara Steele and don’t like them, go to your room right now. You’re in time out until I tell you it’s okay to rejoin the human race.

The Ghost was her fifth spook show and a sequel of sorts to the previous year’s The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock, also directed by Riccardo Freda. In this one, Elio Jotta co-stars as the paralyzed and dying Dr. H. His wife and her lover, Dr. Livingstone (Peter Baldwin), decide to bump him off so she can inherit his fortune and they can spend it.

But the not-so-good Dr. Hitchcock is no sooner in his tomb than he is out of it again, seemly haunting the couple, especially his wife. Such a waste of good poison, too.

Freda — who deserves to be remembered with Dario Argento, Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci — creates suspense with nothing more than sound, things you think you see, outstanding production design, Steele’s gorgeous face, and a budget of about $17. But come on, all you really need is Steele’s face.

If you don’t know her work, shame on you, but you can catch up with some of her early pictures, all easily available on DVD. Look for Black Sunday (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and Castle of Blood (1964). No scream queen was ever better at facially registering a variety of emotions at once. Hell, no scream queen was ever better, period. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.