griggs's - Horror Films (Available on Cinema Paradiso) Everyone Should Watch Once List

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Frank Carveth (Art Hindle) is afraid, afraid of his ex-wife's sanity, fearful for the effects of her influence on their six-year-old daughter, and ultimately, fearful for his own life.

His daughter's teacher Ruth (Susan Hogan) is attacked by two misshapen children in her kindergarten class, leading Carveth to unravel the connections between a series of murders, his relationship with his ex-wife, a radical psychotherapy cult, and the mysterious Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed). As the menace of the terrifying, dangerous child-like creatures comes close to home, Carveth must uncover their true nature before both he and his daughter become their victims.

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Sexy worldly Mrs. Wardh (Edwige Fenech) endures a stifling marriage in the hope of repressing her perverse past - a sadomasochistic relationship with the degenerate Jean (Ivan Rassimov).

Disillusioned with her unloved existence, she embarks upon a torrid affair with suave playboy George (George Hilton). But happiness may prove short-lived: as Jean reappears, a brutal razor-slasher begins bloodily dispatching the nubile nymphets of Vienna... Fearing that she may next face the killer's blade, tormented and deceived, she spirals into an uncontrollable emotional maelstrom where her deviant desires reawaken in a welter of sex, sadism and slaughter...

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Danielle (Margot Kidder) meets Phillip (Lisle Wilson) on a "Peeping Tom" shamelessly voyeuristic TV game show and dodging her ex-husband Emil (William Finley), takes him back to her apartment. But Danielle has a separated Siamese twin sister, Dominique, who is not pleased about the overnight guest.

Journalist neighbour Grace (Jennifer Salt) sees Phillip slaughtered by one of them through her window; the body vanishes before she can convince a sceptical detective (Dolph Sweet) to take a look. Determined to prove that she's right (and get a career-advancing story), Grace investigates, assisted by a private eye (Charles Durning), and becomes more involved in the relationships among Danielle, Dominique, and Emil than she ever expected.

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With his relationship with his wife in tatters, Georges (Jean Dujardin) retreats to a remote town where he purchases the deerskin jacket of his dreams. Along with the jacket he's just acquired, he also gets hold of an old video camera, igniting a new interest as he moves from couture to auteur.

Aided by aspiring editor Denise (Adele Haenel), he sets out to create his masterwork. However, his increasingly close relationship with his deerskin jacket starts to take him down a darker path that he continues to document on camera and which Denise continues to sew together into a film. Laugh out loud funny and gloriously unexpected, the odyssey on which Georges has embarked leaves him guilty of many things, not least an excess of killer style...

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Classic Hammer horror starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) journeys to Castle Dracula, where he is turned into one of the undead by the famous vampire (Lee).

Professor Van Helsing (Cushing) arrives and drives a stake through Harker's heart, but must then pursue Dracula to London, where the Count intends to make Harker's fiancée Lucy Holmwood his bride.

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Following a near-death experience, Yella (Nina Hoss) flees her eastern German hometown, failed marriage and broken dreams to start over again in Hanover.

By chance she finds work with ambitious and determined young executive Philipp (Devid Striesow) and enters a ruthless world of big business and cut-throat boardroom deals for which she finds her looks, quick wits and icy demeanor major assets. But just as Yella seems poised to fully realise her ambitions, she finds herself haunted by truths from the past that threaten to destroy her new life.

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Miriam Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve) collects Renaissance Art, Ancient Egyptian pendants, lovers, souls. Alive and fashionably chic in Manhattan, Miriam is an ageless vampire. "Vampire" is not a word you'll hear in this movie based on the novel by Whitley Strieber.

Instead, debuting feature director Tony Scott stakes out a hip, sensual, modern-gothic makeover. Catherine Deneuve readiates macabre elegance as Miriam, blessed with beauty, cursed with bloodlust. David Bowie is fellow field and refined husband John. In love, in life, in loging they are inseparable. But when John abruptly begins to age and turns to a geriatrics researcher for help; Miriam soon eyes the woman as a replacement for John. 'The Hunger' is insatiable.

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The undead are among us and livelier than ever when Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and a talented group of young bloods star in Interview With The Vampire, the spellbinding screen adaptation of Anne Rice's best seller.

Award-winning box-office favourite Cruise stylishly plays the supremely evil and charismatic vampire Lestat. Pitt is Louis, lured by Lestat into the immortality of the damned, then tormented by an unalterable fact of vampire life; to survive, he must kill. Stephen Rea, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater and newcomer Kirsten Dunst also star. One lifetime alone offers plenty of opportunities for the savage revelries of the night. Imagine what an eternity can bring.

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Horror master Fede Alvarez takes the phenomenally successful 'Alien' franchise back to its iconic roots.

In this truly terrifying sci-fi horror-thriller, a group of young colonisers - scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station - come face-to-face with the most relentless and deadly life form in the universe.

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"The Possessed" is a wonderfully atmospheric proto-giallo based on one of Italy's most notorious crimes, the Alleghe killings, and adapted from the book on that case by acclaimed literary figure Giovanni Comisso.

Peter Baldwin stars as Bernard, a depressed novelist who sets off in search of his old flame Tilde (Virna Lisi), a beautiful maid who works at a remote lakeside hotel. Bernard is warmly greeted by the hotel owner Enrico (Salvo Randone) and his daughter Irma (Valentina Cortese), but Tilde has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Bernard undertakes an investigation and is soon plunged into a disturbing drama of familial secrets, perversion, madness and murder...

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Alex Winter stars as Ricky Coogan, a trade spokesperson sent to South America to help sell a plan to dump a toxic chemical there. Along with his friend, Ernie, and would-be girlfriend and environmental protester, Julie, he visits the test centre.

The three of them gain first hand experience of the chemical's effect when they discover the test centre is a mutant freak farm! When they are taken prisoner by the proprietor and evil scientist, Elijah C Skuggs (Randy Quaid), the consequences are hilarious! Skuggs uses the very chemical they were sent to promote to diffuse Ernie and Julia into Siamese twins whilst the obnoxious Ricky is turned into a half man half beast!

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Piotr Szulkin (1950 - 2018) was a filmmaker of profoundly imaginative works and 'Golem' was his wildly-iconoclastic debut feature film. After an atomic war, scientists programme a new race of humans whose every movement is controlled by technology.

But one creature, Pernat (Marek Walczewski), begins to question the world around him...Shot in muted tones, this disturbing Kafka-esque sci-fi allegory is a precursor to Blade Runner and evokes the apocalyptic landscape of Tarkovsky's Stalker. Its troubling depiction of irresponsible science, fake news and unfettered Al mark it now as wholly prescient.

A hibernating species of giant carnivorous bird is awakened on a Japanese island shortly after the Japanese military encounters an unidentified mass moving beneath the water off-shore.

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Double bill of classic comedy horror featuring Lou Abbott and Bud Costello...

Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Railroad baggage clerks Chick Young (Bud Abbott) and Wilbur Grey (Lou Costello) receive a strange shipment - the last remains of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster - but little do they know that this deadly duo is still very much alive. When the shipment arrives at the House of Horrors, the Monsters are not in their boxes and have disappeared to a secret hideaway island. Blamed for their disappearances, Chick and Wilbur follow their trail to the island, where not only do they meet up with Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and the Monster (Glenn Strange), but a Mad Scientist (Charles Bradstreet) wants to switch Wilbur's brain with that of the Monster. With everyone chasing each other, the Wolfman (Lon Chaney Jr.) shows up to thwart Dracula's plans. Costello finds romance and the Monsters find their final resting places...or do they.
Meet the Mummy (1955)
When the mummy of Klaris, Prince of Evil, is discovered in Egypt, a three-way search is launched for the Sacred medallion, which directs the way to the Tomb of Princess Ara, with its treasure in gold and jewels. Peter Patterson (Bud Abbott) and Freddie Franklin (Lou Costello), Americans stranded in Egypt, are one team of hunters. Whether or not the hunters will find the treasure of Princess Ara's Tomb depends upon what will happen when "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy".

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Movie queen Joan Crawford gives a terrific performance in this chiller from pioneer horror movie producer William Castle. Crawford plays Lucy Harbin, a woman who goes berserk when she finds her husband in bed with another woman.

With her three-year-old daughter accidentally witnessing the grisly act, Lucy axes the couple to death. She spends twenty years in a mental institution for the double murder. After she is released, she moves in with her brother, his wife and her own daughter, now twenty-three. Her nightmare is over...or is it? When a spate of ax murders start occurring suddenly in the neighbourhood, police think Lucy has reverted to her old ways. The truth is finally revealed in a rousing, blood-chilling finale.