Hi Sven!

Could you please play The Hideous Sun Demon? My husband saw it as a kid and said it gave him nightmares for a week! Thanks, Sven!

Out of all the great classics that you have shown, have you ever shown or will you ever show Race With The Devil?

I had read that Bennett, the screenwriter, when asked about the movie's decision to show the demon (which had never been his intention), said that if he had known about the change, he would walked up producer Hal E. Chester's driveway and shoot him!

Spawn of Svengoolie!

Good for Dana Andrews for standing up for the director.

They did the stomp, through the swamp! They did the stomp, through the swamp!

IT'S!

...and now,

Helo? Is this thing on?

Good Morning, Everyone:


There is something about tonight’s offering I cannot exactly sink my teeth into.

The critics (Siskel and Ebert among others) loved it because it was a low budget movie that didn’t come off as one. The reason being the degree of underacting. It is a very slow paced film, one which never changes speeds. The performance of the title character was called one of the best in some time. The public loved it as it earned almost four million dollars at the box office on an outlay of $64K. The premise is a simple one. A woman holds a seance to communicate with her recently deceased mother. The mystic conducting it is more than he seems (I won’t go any farther – you’ll find the spoiler in the film’s title). She senses something that sends her into a panic and things do not end well for anyone participating in this seance.

“Count Yorga, Vampire” was released in June 1970. It is a late sixties movie. Its Vampire has moved from Bulgaria to the Left Coast (Los Angeles) and guests for the seance drive there in a Volkswagen Bus. This film began life as a soft porn, horror flick (“The Loves of Count Iorga”) but Star Robert Quarry either convinced or threatened to walk out on Director Bob Kellijan unless it was released as a straight horror film. Several moments of sexual and/or violent content were cut. I wonder how much more Sven will remove. The film plays with some bits of vampire business but the main characters are woefully inadequate when it comes to dealing with one. The Doctor, a hematologist, sees only one side of the problem, fortunately he has a colleague who has studied vampirism and has given him some tips. How do you determine if someone is a vampire? Go to their house late at night and keep them up talking until sunrise, ask them such inane questions as “do you believe in vampires” and “do you drink wine?”. Audiences must have been shaking their heads en masse as the remaining main characters charge the vampire’s house at dusk, without bona fide stakes, the mallets to drive them home (just some sharp edged bamboo) or a real crucifix (just 2 small pieces of wood tied perpendicular to each other). Don’t you realize – you storm the Castle Frankenstein, not the House of Dracula?

The success of “Count Yorga, Vampire” led to a not so successful sequel as well as the possibility of Quarry appearing in the Dr. Phibes series as the vampire rather than as a more ordinary adversary. The failure of the sequel also ended the chance for Yorga to be a series. For one moment, Quarry appeared to be the successor to Vincent Price. The next, he suffered the same fate as his character in “Dr. Phibes Rises Again”.

He just missed the boat!