Cruise ship Capt. Ashland (George Kennedy, The Naked Gun series) stands a mere three days from retirement, so you know what that means: There will be no woodworking and around-the-house puttering in his future. Not when there’s a Death Ship on the horizon!

Void of passengers but supposedly steered by ghosts, the rusty ship deliberately puts itself in harm’s way of Ashland’s party boat, ensuring a collision. The accident occurs via stock footage from at least two sources — one a third-rate Titanic TV-movie — that don’t come close to matching up with one another. The handful of survivors includes Ashland; his replacement, Marshall (Richard Crenna, Leviathan); Marshall’s wife and two kids, one of whom precociously possesses a small bladder; the band leader (Saul Rubinek, True Romance); an old lady; and a hot woman so someone can take a shower in blood later, after they all board the mysterious vessel.

See, as the title would have it, the Death Ship has a mind of its own, and has one thing on its mind: death, natch. It wastes no time in proceeding to knock off the cast members, because that’s what Nazis would do. (Oh, sorry — spoiler: The ship belonged to Nazis.)

Largely a television director, Alvin Rakoff (1979’s City on Fire) doesn’t bother with subtlety, hitting viewers on the head over and over with the Nazi angle. (We get it, Al!) When he lets up, he’s able to get some effective scenes out of his characters’ demise, particularly those that play upon the universal fears of drowning and seeing one’s face become covered in an ugly crust.

Having an old pro like Kennedy in command helps when the plot veers into turns the script makes no real effort to explain. Death Ship is a lot like Ghost Ship, the 2002 Dark Castle Entetainment picture that stole this film’s terrific poster art, but without the studio gloss — in other words, one of those cheap, haunted-house spookfests that works in spite of itself. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Having recently located her thriving mannequin-manufacturing biz to Lisbon, Betty (Lone Fleming, 1977’s It Happened at Nightmare Inn) reunites with Virginia (María Elena Arpón, The House That Screamed), her roomie from boarding school. Virginia’s square-jawed boyfriend, Roger (César Burner, Green Inferno), immediately suggests the three of them take a train trip to the countryside.

En route, Virginia gets jealous of a growing flirtation between her beau and her BFF, so she leaps off the choo-choo. Instead of walking the tracks back to the station like a normal person, however, she heads off perpendicular to them, through spacious fields to the ruins of Berzano, a medieval town now abandoned for good reason: Because up from its cemetery pop the ghosts of the Knights Templar, depicted here as skeletons in soot-covered hooded robes. (Where the risen knights keep their horses goes unaddressed.)

Yes, Virginia, there is a supernatural force of evil awakened! You’ve disturbed the Tombs of the Blind Dead! The first in writer/director Amando de Ossorio’s four-film series, the Spanish Tombs comes unearthed with a twist on the ol’ zombie conceit: On account of having their eyes pecked out by crows in the 13th century, these guys can’t see a lick; with a thirst for blood, they track their victims by sound, from dire screams to a quickened heartbeat.

Even though the Blind Dead move like semi-frozen molasses, they are terrifying characters. The way their bones pop through graves and shuffle through the maze-like ruins is a dirt-cheap effect, yet highly effective, encouraging viewer cries of “Run, bitch, run!” as they close in on their clueless prey. Other than an ugly rape scene, de Ossorio demonstrates keen instincts on what works, right down to an ending that proves more disturbing by letting your mind fill in its blanks. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

On its surface, it may be easy to confuse Theatre of Blood for just another early ’70s British horror movie; a natural follow-up to star Vincent Price’s pair of Dr. Phibes films, in which an aggrieved maniac wreaks revenge on a group of people in a very specific and entertaining manner. But then as you watch, it quickly becomes clear that Theater plays by its own bizarre rules, making it an utterly unique, darkly comic horror classic.

Price stars as Edward Lionheart, a campy Shakespearian actor whose entire career has been ridiculed in print by London’s elitist circle of theatrical critics. When they deny him the annual acting trophy he’s convinced he deserves, he appears to commit suicide in front of them. But when they all start dying in murderous scenarios inspired by the plays of Lionheart’s beloved Bard, it’s clear that he’s not quite as deceased as he originally appeared.

You first know something is a bit off here when Diana Rigg (five years after TV’s The Avengers and looking amazing), playing Lionheart’s daughter, Edwina, first shows up in drag, complete with beard and enormous blond afro. Then there’s the film’s complete lack of a protagonist. Unable to bring themselves to make a critic a sympathetic hero, director Douglas Hickox and screenwriter Anthony Grenville-Bell instead allow Ian Hendry’s arrogant Peregrine Devlin to finally defeat Lionheart, but in such a way that makes the murderer seem more like a tragic hero than despicable villain.

But the real reason to watch Theatre of Blood is the opportunity to see Price sink his teeth into some of the best speeches Shakespeare ever wrote. Despite being given the excuse of playing an untalented “ham” actor, his performance leaves you wishing he had the opportunity to play those same roles in real life. Ultimately, this makes his character far more sympathetic than the assholes he slaughters throughout. —Allan Mott

Buy it at Amazon.

Introducing himself to the viewer, Hatchet for the Honeymoon‘s protagonist/antagonist says in voice-over, “My name is John Harrington. … I am completely mad.” He’s not joking; by the time he tells us this, he’s killed five young women already, and don’t expect that number to stay put.

Harrington (Stephen Forsyth, No Killing Without Dollars) believes that a woman should be loved once, then dead forever after. The owner of a bridal shop, he finds his victims easily and buries many of them in the greenhouse on the mansion he shares with his wife, Mildred (Laura Betti, A Bay of Blood), a much older woman who refuses to grant him a divorce.

No matter; he’s able to continue his raping/killing spree despite the martial bond. Only when the beautiful, promiscuous Helen (Dagmar Lassander, The House by the Cemetery) comes looking for her missing sister (Femi Benussi, Strip Nude for Your Killer) and cozies up to Harrington does his hobby face a credible threat.

In the hands of a lesser director, the “screemplay” (as the handwritten credits dub it) by Ricco the Mean Machine‘s Santiago Moncada would risk coming off as chop-‘n’-slop trash. With the masterful Mario Bava at work, however, the horror film not only delivers the expected shocks and gore, but a high level of visual artistry. Acting as his own DP, Bava (Black Sunday) treats the screen as a big, colorful canvas, and no corner escapes his eye for composition.

Forsyth excels at playing a psycho audiences nonetheless will have a smidge of sympathy for, delicately balancing the role’s mix of mental illness and black comedy. It’s a shame he called it quits after this Italian film, but at least he went out on a high note. For Bava newcomers, Hatchet is one of the more accessible starting points. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Bachelor journalist Alan Foster (Anthony Franciosa, Tenebre) wanders into a bar late at night where that nutball Edgar Allan Poe (played by nutball Klaus Kinski, 1979’s Nosferatu) is holding the tavern spellbound with his tales of mystery and horror. Some dude mentions to Foster that no one has survived a night in a neighboring haunted castle. Apparently not understanding his odds or unaware that the man next to him is being played Klaus freakin’ Kinski, he thinks, “What a fab idea it would be to spend a night in this neighboring haunted castle!”

After strolling about the grounds for 15 minutes getting jumpy at gusts of wind and banging out a little ditty on the organ, two separate paintings come to life in the form of corset-bound beauties. Yowsa! Art appreciation!

Almost immediately, the redhead (Michèle Mercier, Black Sabbath) announces she wants to bed him, which, seeing how Franciosa is a ringer for game-show host Bert Convy, you’d either have to be drunk or dead to do. As it turns out, the latter is true, and Foster’s just watching their deaths unfold in front of him, like a virtual-reality instant replay.

He spends the second half of Web of the Spider running from these dead people, screaming “NNNOOOOO!!!” and tripping over things. And just when you think nothing is going to happen, it doesn’t! But I will say this: It has one helluva great, ain’t-it-a-bitch ending. For the record, there are no spiders. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.