The Terror (1963)
If you’ve ever finished an exam twenty minutes or so before the end of the time allotted you might be familiar with the anxiety of not knowing whether it is a good or a bad sign. Did you read all of the questions properly? Have you answered the question itself and avoided the trap of reeling out a pre-prepared body of knowledge which is only tangentially linked to the topic you’re being tested on? If so then you can probably sympathise with Roger Corman, who finished filming his 1963 classic The Raven a whole two days in advance. This being Corman he didn’t use his remaining time to mull over his original movie but decided instead to make an entirely new film (that’s right, in 48 hours) which utilised The Raven’s sets and its star actor, Boris Karloff, who was contractually tied to the director from the initial project. Read more
Shock Waves (1976)
You learn something new every day. According to a quote on the DVD cover, Shock Waves is “the best of the Nazi zombie movies”, a sub-genre that I didn’t even know existed until this movie crossed my radar. I have to say that I was drawn to this mid-70s chiller, in which the aforementioned Nazi zombies rise out of the sea to menace a shipwrecked group of holidaymakers, because of its lurid premise, and the hilariously contorted logic that says Nazi zombies are going to be somehow more evil than ‘ordinary’ zombies (as pointed out by my girlfriend). Matters weren’t helped by the histrionic trailer here that makes the movie look like a rather tedious runaround, with the breathless voiceover guy trying his best to whip up some excitement. Read more