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If you've seen "Jurassic World Rebirth," you know it goes a little heavier on Spielberg references than the previous installments (a surprise given that Spielberg is not a fan of repeating himself). There are clear nods to "Jaws" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," as well as the Og "Jurassic Park," but Gareth Edwards is such a dedicated cinephile that he can skillfully smuggle in hat-tips to, say, "Zatoichi" in "Rogue One" without eliciting groans from savvy moviegoers.

Sometimes, you're so steeped in film history that references happen by accident. Martin Scorsese is the master of the inadvertent homage. I've seen him pull shots and sequences from Jean-Pierre Melville, Mario Bava and freakin' Gary Sherman (the opening of "Bringing Out the Dead" is a straight-up genuflection to the sleazy glory of "Vice Squad") that feel like movie muscle memory. Many directors show off their references; Scorsese just pulls them out of the ether.

Scream Factory‘s October home video line-up includes 4K editions of End of Days, Black Sunday, and Nosferatu the Vampyre.

End of Days will be released on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray on October 7.

The 1999 action-horror film is directed by Peter Hyams (Timecop) and written by Andrew W. Marlowe (Hollow Man).

Disc 1 – 4K Uhd:

4K Scan From The Original Camera Negative Approved By Director/Cinematographer Peter Hyams (new) Presented In Dolby Vision Audio: DTS-hd Master Audio 5.1 Surround, DTS-hd Master Audio 2.0 Stereo Audio Commentary With Director/Cinematographer Peter Hyams

Disc 2 – Blu-ray:

4K Scan From The Original Camera Negative Approved By Director/Cinematographer Peter Hyams (new) Audio: DTS-hd Master Audio 5.1 Surround, DTS-hd Master Audio 2.0 Stereo Audio Commentary With Director/Cinematographer Peter Hyams “One Hell Of A Time: Peter Hyams At Universal” – Interview With Director/Cinematographer Peter Hyams (new) “You Will Bear Witness: Writing End Of Days” – Interview With Screenwriter Andrew W. Marlowe (new...

Aesthetically speaking, Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik may be the greatest film to spawn from comic book source material. Given the Italian filmmaker’s work as cinematographer, this is hardly surprising. Bava’s choice of lenses (lots of fisheye), sense of composition, and eye for color are unrivaled. With Danger: Diabolik, Bava adapts his technique at times to approximate the arrangement of panels within a comic book page, breaking up the frame into compartmentalized units by situating objects like rearview mirrors, wrought bedframes, and elaborate shelving in the foreground of the shot.

The plot here is almost secondary to its set pieces. Diabolik (John Phillip Law) and his partner, Eva Kant (Marisa Mell), steal from the rich to give to themselves. Not exactly adverse to violence, it’s no big deal for Diabolik to dispatch his foes, when necessary, usually with an unerringly lobbed dagger. Given some of his actions,...

[Editor’s note: this list was originally published in October 2022. It has since been updated with new entries.]

Slasher movies are generally considered to be among the more disreputable horror film subgenres. They can be misogynistic, punishing women for their sexuality while also appealing to viewers’ most prurient, voyeuristic impulses: celebrating the male gaze while damning the objects of that gaze except for a virginal “Final Girl.” But slasher movies can veer the closest to true-crime of any of the horror subgenres, meaning that its issues of representation often say as much about an audience that wants to consume beastly criminality as packaged narrative, as it does the filmmakers who deliver them to us.

The best slasher movies are as idea-oriented as any horror films. And almost all force you to look within and ask yourself: what’s the line between you watching a horrific act… and finally looking away?

The genre as we know it was birthed in the mid-’70s from American filmmakers like Tobe Hooper and John Carpenter,...

Screambox has revealed the new films that are joining the Bloody Disgusting-powered horror streaming service in June.

If you’re thirsty for more blood in the wake of Sinners, sink your fangs into the Screambox Original film Bleeding on June 10. In a world where vampire blood is harvested as a drug, two desperate teenagers on the run from a vicious dealer break into an empty house and find a sleeping girl locked inside.

This month celebrates the masters of horror with new additions from George Romero (Two Evil Eyes), Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Bob Clark (Deathdream), and Mario Bava (Shock).

There’s also several cults classics featuring genre icons like Jamie Lee Curtis (Terror Train), Bruce Campbell (Maniac Cop 2), Robert Englund (Dead & Buried), Christopher Lee, and Tom Savini (The Prowler).

The month’s full schedule is as follows:

June 6: The Cat o’ Nine Tails, The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave...

Kino Lorber has announced two genre films coming to 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray this summer: Silent Scream on July 8 and Danger: Diabolik on July 22.

Silent Scream has been newly restored in 4K from the original camera negative with HDR10.

The 1979 gothic horror film marks the only effort from director Denny Harris. Jim & Ken Wheat (Pitch Black) and Wallace C. Bennett (The Philadelphia Experiment) penned the script.

Rebecca Balding, Cameron Mitchell, Avery Schreiber, Barbara Steele, and Yvonne De Carlo star.

Special features:

Audio Commentary by Writers Jim and Ken Wheat with Actress Rebecca Balding Audio Commentary by Actress Barbara Steele, Moderated by Film Historian David Del Valle Scream of Success – 30 Years Later: Featurette The Original Script: Featurette The Wheat Brothers – A Look Back: Featurette Interview with Actress Rebecca Balding Audio Interview with Director Denny Harris Theatrical Trailer TV Spot Radio Spots 5.1 Surround and Lossless 2.0 Audio

Unable to get housing on campus,...

Carnaval provides a convenient cover story for nearly 100 deaths and disappearances in “The Secret Agent,” Kleber Mendonça Filho’s robust sense-memory immersion into the sights, sounds and suffocating climate — both political and meteorological — the Brazilian director associates with 1977 Recife. It was a period of great “mischief,” per the super cinematic thriller’s opening titles, although that’s too light a word to describe the everyday corruption that permeates practically every aspect of this meaty 160-minute period piece. Mendonça remembers it well, demonstrating how even the worst of times can inspire a perverse sort of nostalgia.

The 56-year-old director was just 8 years old at the time the the film takes place — roughly the same age as Fernando, the son of his main character, a man of multiple identities played by “Narcos” star Wagner Moura — and it seems safe to assume that the boy’s all-consuming desire to see “Tubarão” (the Portuguese...

The horrors of Alien and Lifeforce have their roots in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. A look at the roots of space vampires and their meaning:

What do you think of when you think of Dracula? Isolated Romanian castles? Villagers making holy signs to ward off evil? Crucifixes brandished like shields? Bram Stoker’s Dracula in the popular consciousness is the archetypal supernatural horror novel. A monster that cannot be killed by mortal means, but is to be warded off with garlic and crucifixes, bound by magical rules such as its inability to pass a threshold uninvited.

Although there are no vampires in the Bible, it is a monster intrinsically bound to Christian theology, from movies like Wes Craven’s gloriously trashy Dracula 2000 that revealed Dracula to be the cursed immortal, Judas, to Mike Flanagan’s miniseries Midnight Mass.

Yet when we go back to the source, the novel, Dracula,...

Felipe Vargas roams free with Rosario. Although the lean, 88-minute horror movie is set largely in one location, the camera moves with the sort of calculated recklessness and relentlessness akin to an early Sam Raimi picture. It’s no surprise The Evil Dead, both the original and remake, were an influence for Vargas.

In the years leading up to Rosario, which is about a Wall Street player (played by Emeraude Toubia) visiting her deceased grandmother’s apartment and uncovering rituals and family secrets, Vargas sharpened his teeth on a long list of short films. The excellent Milky Teeth was a major breakout for the filmmaker now attached to the Leprechaun remake. Recently, Vargas spoke with Daily Dead about his feature directorial debut and why it means so much to him.

This is a mostly one-location horror movie that actually isn't all darkness and shadows. How important was it for you to have these bold greens,...

Screambox has revealed the new films that are joining the Bloody Disgusting-powered horror streaming service in May.

Oscar winner Ken Russell (Devils) explores the drug-fueled night that inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein in Gothic. Gabriel Byrne (Hereditary), Julian Sands (Warlock), Natasha Richardson (The Parent Trap), and Timothy Spall (Harry Potter) star.

From Italian horror maverick Mario Bava (Black Sunday) comes Kill, Baby… Kill. A small village is haunted by the ghost of a murderous young girl in the sumptuous Gothic chiller, which is said to have influenced Dario Argento’s Suspiria.

Heaven help those caught in The Devil’s Rain. The ’70s supernatural horror ensemble includes William Shatner (Star Trek), Ernest Borgnine (Escape from New York), Tom Skerritt (Alien), Church of Satan founder Anton Lavey, and John Travolta in his film debut.

Other May highlights include: The Stuff director Larry Cohen‘s genre-defying God Told Me To; acclaimed psychological nightmare...

Midnight Pulp has revealed the new films that are joining the cult streaming service in May.

Horror highlights include: Mario Bava‘s gothic chiller Kill, Baby… Kill!; acclaimed psychological nightmare Repulsion; Ken Russell‘s Gothic, a retelling of the drug-fueled night that inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein; and The Coffee Table, about which Stephen King said, “My guess is you have never, not once in your whole life, seen a movie as black as this one.”

There’s also ’60s sci-fi horror Queen of Blood with Dennis Hopper; Bigfoot hidden gem Creature from Black Lake; horror anthology Trapped Ashes featuring segments by Joe Dante (Gremlins) and Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th); supernatural horror To the Devil a Daughter with Christopher Lee; Larry Cohen’s genre-defying God Told Me To; and the irresistibly titled Kaiju Glam Metal Shark Attack.

Here’s the full line-up:

May 2: Return of Street Fighter,...

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If you are a horror fan, then there is a big chance that you might have heard about the horror streaming service Shudder, and if you have its subscription, you might be wondering what’s in store for you in May 2025. Don’t worry. There is a host of new and old horror movies coming to the service in the upcoming month, and we have listed the 11 best movies coming to Shudder in May 2025.

Overlord (May 1)

Overlord is an alternate history action horror film directed by Julius Avery from a screenplay co-written by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith. The 2018 film is set in an alternate 1940s, towards the end of World War II, and it revolves around a group of American paratroopers on a mission to destroy a German radio tower. They soon find themselves in a...

Fandor has revealed the new films that are joining the artfully entertaining streaming service in May.

This month includes Dario Argento‘s influential directorial debut The Bird with the Crystal Plumage along with a several other stylish giallo murder-mysteries, like Footprints, Night of the Scorpion, Libido, and Sonno Profondo, plus the documentary All the Colors of Giallo.

Other highlights include: Mario Bava‘s Gothic chiller Kill, Baby… Kill!; Ken Russell‘s Gothic, a retelling of the drug-fueled night that inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein; ’60s sci-fi horror Queen of Blood with Dennis Hopper; and horror anthology Trapped Ashes featuring segments by Joe Dante (Gremlins) and Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th).

Here’s the full line-up:

May 2: The Tree, The Mayor and the Mediatheque, 1982, Quackser Fortune Has A Cousin In The Bronx, Lie With Me, Labyrinth of Cinema, All the Colors of Giallo, Sonno Profondo, Trapped Ashes

May 9: Footprints,...

What did the Catholic Church have to say about genre milestones like Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, The Exorcist, and A Nightmare on Elm Street? How about transgressive horror favorites like The Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave, Ms. 45, and Cannibal Ferox? Some of the answers may surprise you, though others undoubtedly will not. Matt Rogerson explores these and many, many more in his debut book The Vatican vs. Horror Movies, a thoroughly researched and compellingly written book about the place where the worlds of horror and faith collide.

Most of us who have spent much time exploring film history have no doubt encountered entities that have often been unkind to the horror genre like the Catholic Legion of Decency, the Hays Code, the MPAA, and the British Board of Film Classification’s “Video Nasties” label. Rogerson uses a publication I was not previously familiar with,...

Positive or not, all critical appraisals of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s films inevitably land on the same talking point: their inordinate cinephilia. Rightly so: the Belgian duo’s filmography––an oeuvre now spanning four features and a handful of shorts––teems with nods to a seemingly endless cascade of Italian giallos from the likes of Mario Bava, Sergio Martino, and Dario Argento. You can call that an act of “cinematic rehabilitation,” as Justin Chang once wrote in his review of Let the Corpses Tan––though perhaps that’s only apt to ring true if you think that particular blend of hyper-stylized pulp needs rehabilitating in the first place. Hence the rather simplistic argument: fans of the classics Cattet and Forzani invoke will undoubtedly relish their works while everyone else likely writes them off as hollow tributes––or, to borrow from Stephen Holden’s far less generous take on their 2009 Amer,...

It stands to reason that genre film lovers would make some of the best genre films. Of course, that's not a hard and fast rule — some fans-turned-filmmakers can become so blinded by their love of the movies that inspire them that they end up making a thinly veiled, watered-down version of what's come before. Yet when you're dealing with a filmmaker who has a keen creative sensibility and knows how to throw all their influences into a blender in order to come out with something that feels fresh yet familiar, then you're hitting that special sweet spot of genre cinema bliss.

Hitting that sweet spot is exactly what director Scott Derrickson has done with "The Gorge," a movie which is a veritable potpourri of genres, tones, and influences, all coming together in a way that's immensely satisfying. Derrickson has made a career out of proving his genre bonafides several times over,...

Filmmaker / musician Chris Alexander is the former editor-in-chief of Fangoria magazine, the co-founder/editor of Delirium magazine, and he wrote the book Corman/Poe. Now, he’s teaming with Headpress Publishing to send his new book Art! Trash! Terror!: Adventures in Strange Cinema out into the world. The book has a release date of March 15th (you can pre-order copies on Amazon at This Link), but the launch event is set to take place at Dark Delicacies in Burbank, California and the Cinelounge Sunset theatre in Hollywood, California this weekend!

Art! Trash! Terror! has a page count of 460. The official description says it’s a treasure trove of in-depth essays and edifying interviews that celebrate some of the most eccentric and unforgettable movies in cult cinema history. From recognized classics to misunderstood masterpieces to unfairly maligned curios, the author takes an alternately serious and playful but always personal look...

Nosferatu (2024), directed by Robert Eggers, reimagines the legendary 1922 silent film classic. It brings a fresh yet eerie perspective to the iconic vampire myth. Known for his mastery of atmospheric horror and historical authenticity, Eggers creates a chilling retelling of Count Orlok’s tale. The film captures the same haunting tension and visual storytelling seen in his previous works like The Witch and The Lighthouse. The cinematography, by Dop Jarin Blaschke, echoes the ominous lighting and stark shadows of the original. It adds a unique modern twist. With a mesmerizing performance by Bill Skarsgård as the terrifying vampire, Nosferatu (2024) captures the original’s haunting aura while expanding its thematic depth. If you were drawn to its eerie atmosphere and dark, immortal themes, these 7 classic vampire movies will be a perfect follow-up.

1. Nosferatu (1922) | F.W. Murnau

If you admire the atmospheric world of Nosferatu (2024), Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) is essential viewing. This silent film...

The Wild, Wild Podcast, a show about Italian cult cinema, is the latest addition to the Film Stories Podcast Network. Links and details here:

A new year, the first of many new exciting podcasts to grace the Film Stories Podcast Network, or rather in this case join it as we welcome aboard the Wild, Wild Podcast.

In this entertaining and informative podcast, co-hosts Rod Barnett (of The Bloody Pit and NachsyCast) and Dr. Adrian Smith (historian and writer) explore Italian cult cinema with themed seasons, and have so far covered science fiction, police thrillers, erotic comedies, comic adaptations and more. Favourite directors of the podcast include Antonio Margheriti, Mario Bava, Ruggero Deodato, Sergio Martino and Luigi Cozzi, the latter having featured in a mini-season of his own which culminated in an interview with the maestro live from his Dario Argento museum in Rome (even the podcast theme is based on...

Politics and the apocalypse collide in Rumours – a horror satire that threatens to steal Megalopolis’ crown as 2024’s most eccentric movie.

When Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis came out earlier this year, opinions were somewhat divided as to whether it was a grand folly, a visionary masterpiece, a piece of demented high camp, or a mixture of all of these.

What most could agree on was that there was nothing else quite like it in 2024’s line-up of movies, whether it was in its unnatural dialogue and bizarre character names (Aubrey Plaza as financial TV reporter Wow Platinum) or its incredibly uneven visuals, which veered from the captivatingly imaginative to the embarrassingly kitsch.

For better or worse, Coppola had managed to finally achieve his goal of creating a vision of the USA as a late Roman empire in danger of tipping over into facism. Which, as 2024 nears its end, now...

Tim Burton, the director of films like Batman, Edward Scissorhands, and both Beetlejuice films is amazed that he got to make movies and build the career he has in Hollywood. Burton knows that his style of movies isn’t the norm, something clear to see considering one of his first films was a black and white stop-motion short about a boy with a fascination for horror icon Vincent Price. However, Burton is thankful that he has been able to have a film career based on what some regard as weird.

The director spoke to Deadline while at the Marrakech Film Festival, where he was asked about his relationship with Hollywood and movie studios. Even after being able to make conceptually weird films such as Beetlejuice and Ed Wood, he still feels like entering the studio system is difficult because trust isn’t exactly automatic. After decades of working for the system,...

The release of Alien in 1979 brought the terror of deep space to a whole new audience. Director Ridley Scott's exercise in psychological terror that saw a ship's crew answer a distress call that led to their downfall has spawned countless sequels and a cinematic universe. The Alien franchise continues to draw in audiences who are fans of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the Xenomorphs created by H.R. Giger. The impact of Alien has been so huge that large elements of the film were utilized in Event Horizon, but both owe their existence to another film, one released in 1965 entitled Planet of the Vampires.

While Ridley Scott has staunchly denied its influence, the similarities between Alien and Planet of the Vampires, directed by Italian horror maestro Mario Bava, are impossible to ignore. Even if an audience member was unaware of the comments about Bava's influence on Scott, there's a common...

With comic book adaptations dominating the film industry today, let’s take a trip back to a time when they were neither reputable nor among the most expensive films ever made. For fans of cult movies, Mario Bava hardly needs any introduction. Since his debut directing the gorgeously gothic “Black Sunday,” he innovated several genres, including the Giallo, with “The Girl Who Knew Too Much,” paving the way for the slasher film, the horror anthology with his masterful tryptic “Black Sabbath” (In the process giving the godfathers of heavy metal their moniker), and even science fiction – the fingerprints of his “Planet of the Vampires” are all over Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and “Prometheus.” “Danger: Diabolik” was produced during the height of the James Bond and “Batman 66” craze to cash in on the cult Eurospy genre. But whereas contemporary comic book adaptations center around superheroes, Bava’s world is an altogether different one.

Any decade of horror could be regarded as a seminal time for the genre, such is the consistently excellent output it has brought audiences over time. However, if you had to name one era that introduced horror fans to great auteurs, lasting franchises, and superbly gory scenes, it was the 1970s. It was a breeding ground for talented filmmakers and was able to produce extreme content, just before the UK's "video nasty" era of the early 1980s almost derailed it.

Horror movies from the 1970s deserve more love, and they benefited from the American censors becoming more lenient towards violent imagery. This resulted in creative filmmakers going all out to produce features that pushed the boundaries of cinema censorship. When you look over the must-see movies of 1970s horror filmmaking, you'll find that many of the wonderful films are surprisingly gory, and reached new heights of depravity for the time.

There’s a moment in John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian that always gets to me. It’s that scene right before the final battle when Conan prays to his Cimmerian god and states that no one will remember who he and his companion were – the only thing that matters is that, in that moment, two stood against many. From the battle of Thermopylae to Black Hawk Down, the idea of a small group standing their ground against an overwhelming force is one of the most compelling setups in all of fiction, and this also applies to the horror genre.

Many of our favorite scary stories borrow from this same mythological source, which is why there are countless horror movies about small groups of survivors attempting to defend an isolated location from evil invaders. And in honor of what we’ve now come to know as “Siege Films,” we’ve decided...

Stars: Barry Sullivan, Norma Bengell, Ivan Rassimov, Ángel Aranda, Evi Marandi, Franco Andrei, Federico Boido, Mario Morales | Written by Ib Melchior, Alberto Bevilacqua, Callisto Cosulich, Mario Bava, Antonio Roman, Rafael J. Salvia | Directed by Mario Bava

Mario Bava, often celebrated as a master of Gothic horror and Italian genre cinema, brought to life a diverse array of films that showcased his visual ingenuity and flair for mood and atmosphere. Planet of the Vampires, a standout entry in the realm of science fiction horror, epitomizes Bava’s commitment to stylistic audacity and thematic exploration. This review examines how this film fits into and enriches Bava’s oeuvre, highlighting the characteristics that align with his broader body of work.

Bava’s films are renowned for their distinctive visual style, characterized by deep chiaroscuro lighting, saturated colour palettes, and intricate set designs. Planet of the Vampires is no exception, showcasing these traits within the context of a futuristic,...

Related Images invites readers behind the scenes and into the sketchbooks of working filmmakers to learn more about their creative processes.Elizabeth Sankey’s Witches is now showing exclusively on Mubi.Witches.Title cards are an underappreciated art and a powerful tool for every director. They can punctuate a moment, make it more comic, shocking, or beautiful. They can hold your hand and lead you sweetly down the garden path of the story you’re about to experience, or they can undermine your expectations and throw you for a loop. Even their placement in the runtime can have a huge impact. In the black-metal revenge thriller Mandy (2018) Panos Cosmatos waits 75 minutes before abruptly kicking his title card onto the screen. Conversely Luca Guadagnino places the card for Call Me by Your Name (2017) at the end of the film to enhance Elio’s heartbreaking stare into the fire, intensifying his crushing...

The 1960s were a great time for stylish heist movies, with many classics which are still loved by fans decades later. The heist genre initially sprung out of film noir, but it gradually developed its own identity, and it came to encompass romantic comedies, action thrillers and even spy movies. The 1960s marked a boom for the genre, after films like Rififi and The Killing brought about a new wave of enthusiasm in the 1950s.

Heist movies in the 1970s got much grittier and darker, in line with the trends of New Hollywood. By contrast, the 1960s delivered some more stylish and lighthearted capers, such as Ocean's 11 and How to Steal a Million. This era was defined by suave thieves pulling off intricately plotted heists, and there wasn't much of the violence and bloodshed that's usually associated with crime movies.

Related 20 Best Heist Movies Of All Time, Ranked

The...

As the final stretch of October sets in, there is still plenty of time to catch favorite flicks, spooky, witchy, scary or cozy in the season of pumpkins, monsters and more. Freeform’s 31 Nights of Halloween has several classic films airing all month long such as Casper (1995), Arachnophobia, Goosebumps, Edward Scissorhands, etc.

More recent films like 2021’s Ghostbustesr: Afterlife, 2022’s Hocus Pocus 2 (2022) and Haunted Mansion (2023) will also be available. Disney+ is the home of several of the movies in the below list, as is Max. Follow along below for your favorite titles as well as what is available by streamer and network.

Movies:

While Bram Stoker’s Dracula directed by Francis Ford Coppola is streaming on MGM+, several other vampire movies like Interview with the Vampire are available on Max. Peacock also boasts a couple newer fanged flicks like Renfield (2023) and Abigail (2024). Twilight is not streaming anywhere currently, but...

Stars: Lauren Lavera, Claudia Gerini, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Linda Zampaglione, Yassine Fadel, Melanie Gaydos, Gianluigi Galvani, Courage Osabohine | Written by Federico Zampaglione, Stefano Masi | Directed by Federico Zampaglione

{Note: With the film out now on DVD, here’s reposting of our review of the fantastic Italian horror, The Well]

Lisa Gray, a budding art restorer who travels to the small Italian village of Sambuci just outside Rome to bring a medieval painting back to its former glory for a wealthy and titled client. Little does she know she is placing her life in danger from an evil curse and a monster born of myth and brutal pain.

I have been a fan of Federico Zampaglione’s genre work since I saw his film Shadow in 2009. Then came the original cut of Tulpa back at Frighfest 2012. It’s safe to say I was one of the Only people who reviewed that...

James Wan has more than earned his inclusion in the pantheon of horror maestros. Over a 20-year career that started in 2004 with "Saw," Wan has mostly stayed true to the genre, making films about monsters human, ghostly and adorably parasitic (who doesn't love that ghastly cutie Gabriel from "Malignant"?). His films are fun, funny, and almost always terrifying in surprising ways (i.e. when he's not making superhero or action movies). Wan works an audience like a showman who's carefully studied the tricks of his predecessors, so when he makes a list of his favorite movies, you'd do well to add those titles to your viewing queue -- especially if you're an aspiring director yourself.

As a horror aficionado, Wan is also worth listening to when he breaks down his favorites by subgenre. Even if he's never knocked out a zombie flick or a werewolf movie, learning his preferences can...

Now streaming on Max, the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic Salem’s Lot is a feature film produced by horror master James Wan, and Wan has taken to social media this week to reveal his own personal list of the best vampire horror movies ever made.

James Wan’s Vampire Watchlist includes classic like Nosferatu (1922) and Dracula (1931) alongside 1980s favorites including Fright Night and Near Dark, as well as vampire movies directed by the likes of Mario Bava, Neil Jordan, and Francis Ford Coppola.

Here’s the full list of James Wan’s personal favorite blood-sucker movies…

Bram Stoker’s Dracula The Night Stalker (1972) Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter Vampire Circus Vampire Lovers Horror of Dracula Salem’s Lot (1979) Dracula (1931) Nosferatu (1922) Interview with the Vampire Near Dark Fright Night Blade Subspecies 2 Planet of the Vampires

While James Wan has dipped his toes into various horror sub-genres over the years,...

Giallo is a genre dominated mainly by two names in the modern mind, those being Mario Bava and Dario Argento. But the advent of the Italian horror sub-genre caused a renaissance of blood-soaked mysteries to erupt in the 1970s, and one such lesser known film is Massimo Dallamanos 1974 offering What Have They Done to Your Daughters? While this mouthful of a movie is not as ubiquitous as the likes of Deep Red or Blood and Black Lace, it is unique in that it combines the familiar elements of Giallo with the gritty realism of a police procedural. The result of this genre marriage is a realistic, disturbing, and exciting horror film that offers a fascinating retake on the genres usual tropes.

One of the many reasons to be so thankful for the resurgence of Tim Burton with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that it shows us how his knowledge of film is wider than we give him credit for. Part of the disappointment of his recent career has been how it feels like his filmmaking approach had stagnated into simply photocopying a bland "Tim Burton filter" on top of ho-hum material. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice shot a lightning rod through Burton's system, energizing him into flexing muscles that had seemingly gone stiff and reaching deeper into his bag of cinema references to spice up his approach. Of the many touchstones he glances at, the juiciest is his shout-outs to Italian giallo icon Mario Bava, whose legacy informed a number of moments throughout the film.

What do you get when you cross a glossy all-star business drama with a kinky Italian horror flick, a German crime procedural, and “Fiddler on the Roof?” That insane mix may sound too good to be true, but it’s not — it’s a movie that actually exists. It’s called “Bloodline,” it was released by Paramount in 1979, and after years of intermittent accessibility on home video, it’s now available in a beautiful Blu-ray edition from the boutique label Vinegar Syndrome.

At the time of its release, “Bloodline” wasn’t a success by any criteria, but it was a major release thanks to an international cast consisting of Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara, James Mason, Romy Schneider, Omar Sharif, Beatrice Straight (just a few years after her Oscar-winning turn in “Network”), Irene Papas and others. The fact that it was based on a novel by bestselling author Sidney Sheldon — who...

Known for her natural grace and elegant beauty, Audrey Hepburn was a fixture of many notable films throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Winning an Academy Award for Roman Holiday and starring opposite Henry Fonda and future husband Mel Ferrer in War and Peace, Audrey Hepburn established herself early on as the epitome of glamour and sophistication. In 1957, Hepburn was paired with the legendary Fred Astaire in Funny Face, a film that combined upbeat musical numbers and bold colors with a clever satire of the fashion industry.

While Funny Face is whimsical and pairs one of Hollywood's up-and-coming stars with a legendary leading man known for his roles alongside Ginger Rogers, there's also a substantial amount of depth. Funny Face, as was the case with many films of the Technicolor era, served as a focal point for current trends in fashion but also broke from the typical ways in which women...

The erotic thriller was a prominent staple of early '90s cinema. Capitalizing on the success of Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct, many films utilized stylish design and scenes of heightened sexuality that accompanied complex murder mysteries. These were certainly nothing new, as many of them had been prominent in several Italian Giallo films from years prior. Named for the yellow (giallo in Italian) pulp novels heavily influenced by the likes of Agatha Christie, these films were crafted by the likes of Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Sergio Martino, Umberto Lenzi, and even Lucio Fulci.

The brief run of American erotic thrillers that were prominent in the 1990s attracted multiple A-list directors and actors, hoping to capture the same lightning in a bottle that Verohoven had. Unfortunately, many of these attempts were met with critical disappointment. Jade, directed by William Friedkin, is now more associated with the short-lived film career of David Caruso.

The following reveals spoilers for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, now playing in theaters.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has proven a hit for director Tim Burton, who rocketed to fame on the surprise success of the 1988 original to become one of Hollywood's most distinctive auteurs. The film has earned praise in part for evoking Burton's early hits, when people were less familiar with his vision and his imaginative cinematic worlds felt newer. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice taps into the nostalgia without losing the energy, and delivers the most Burton-like Burton movie in a long time.

He takes advantage of the opportunity to pack it full of Easter eggs, most of which reflect the movie's kooky world. It also includes an overt reference to Italian horror movie director Mario Bava, who helmed a series of cult classics in the 1960s and 1970s. Burton is an enthusiastic fan of the director, whose influence can be felt in many of his movies.

Sergio Martino’s Torso may not achieve the sustained delirium of Mario Bava and Dario Argento’s best work, but it’s still a top-shelf giallo. Martino directs with panache, deploying lots of slow zooms, putting the camera in odd positions, and cheekily toying with Pov shots. What’s more, Torso foregrounds a motif that recurs throughout the giallo: the interpenetration of sex, violence, and art.

In the opening scene, a professor lectures his distracted students on Pietro Perugino’s portrait of an arrow-pierced Saint Sebastian. While the professor drones on, the camera slinks around the ornate auditorium, catching the students’ exchanged glances and longing looks, hinting at the erotic appeal that can be unleashed by visual depictions of violence. Later, the evidence from a murder scene will be projected before the students in the same manner as the Perugino: art as murder, murder as art. As it turns out,...

This article contains massive spoilers for "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice." Don't say it a third time!

If there ever was a filmmaker who wasn't afraid to let his freak flag fly, it's Tim Burton. Years before the likes of Clive Barker, Guillermo del Toro, Edgar Wright, and other horror geeks began making films, Burton was infusing all of his short films and subsequent feature films with homages to all manner of horror film ephemera. Even though Burton has expanded and experimented with his personal aesthetic over the course of his career, he's never lost his horror nerd credentials. His latest film, "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," is further proof of this, as it's saturated with all manner of esoteric elements, and not just ones involving horror films, either: Burton is also a big fan of alternative music and nostalgic kitsch.

Although "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" doesn't have to try too hard at being horror — the genre is...

Warning: This article contains major spoilers for "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice." Read at your own risk!

"Beetlejuice" gave audiences one of Michael Keaton's funniest and best performances back in 1988. With less than 20 minutes of screentime (a limited window kept intact for the newly released sequel "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice"), Keaton managed to become one of the most memorable characters of all time, an icon in both comedy and horror. The bio-exorcist and trickster demon, whose name is actually spelled Betelgeuse, is a scheming, mischievous, and occasionally menacing character obsessed with escaping the afterlife, and he's also more than a little handsy and horny. That's pretty much all we know about the character, and honestly, that's all we really needed to know to understand his vibe in Tim Burton's dark circus of twisted ghosts and Saturn sandworms. 

But now that Tim Burton is back behind the director's chair for "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," he took...

Oh no, you’ve done it now: You said that name three times, so he’s out!

Yep, it’s Michael Keaton’s compellingly horrible undead Beetlejuice, still large as life and twice as unnatural, still with the sweaty black circles around his eyes, still barking and twitching like an automaton gone rogue. Thirty-five years after he last created havoc in the Deetz family’s attic, he’s back to resume courting Lydia Deetz, whose clairvoyant gifts as a child meant she could see Beetlejuice when nobody else could. Beetlejuice, being disgusting on many levels, decided they had a psychic bond and were destined to be together. There’s only 6,000 years between them, after all.

Related: See All Of Jenna Ortega’s Beetlejuice-Inspired Red Carpet Looks

But things have moved on, as they do even in white-picket-fence towns with covered bridges. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is not so much a sequel — which...

There’s an inventive sequence early in the unexpectedly delightful Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in which the Bee Gees’ “Tragedy” accompanies Monica Bellucci’s soul-sucking demoness as her hacked up body parts are shaken loose from crates in the afterlife’s lost-and-found warehouse, where she proceeds to stitch herself back together like a gorgeous DIY Frankenstein monster. That scene multitasks as a show of kinship with the same actor’s role as a vampire bride in Bram Stoker’s Dracula; a tribute from Tim Burton to a key Gothic literature inspiration; and a darkly delicious valentine to the director’s offscreen partner of the past two years.

One of many inspired set-pieces in a clever sequel laced with hilarious callbacks to the 1988 original and amusingly eclectic pop-culture references to everything from Carrie to Mario Bava, from Soul Train to Donna Summer, it’s not the only time during the movie that I scrawled,...

As beloved as Tim Burton’s original 1988 classic “Beetlejuice” may be, no one could accuse the film of having much in the way of deep human emotions. It was a vibes movie with a transfixing level of world-building, the imagination to rewrite the rules of life and death, and the funny bone to merge both realms for a calypso dance sequence. It became a legacy credit for actors Geena Davis, Catherina O’Hara, and Winona Ryder, not to mention the decaying bio-exorcist at the undead heart of it all: Michael Keaton.

After several abortive attempts at a sequel over the intervening decades, director Tim Burton has — with a few exceptions — reassembled his original core squad, including composer Danny Elfman. To the mix, he has added a perfectly-chosen menage of new names and pulled off a maturation of the two-for-one world he once built from the waiting room of the Afterlife...

After the massive success of Shudder’s original program 101 Greatest Horror Moments of All Time, comes the newest original program Horror’s Greatest.

Horror’s Greatest through its five episodes, “Tropes & Cliches”, “Giant Monsters”, “Japanese Horror”, “Horror Comedies”, and “Stephen King Adaptations”, showrunner Kurt Sayenga uses a unique format through deep dives with a vast variety of on-screen interviewees, including myself, to bring new perspectives on the horror films you love, while also bringing attention to the lesser-known gems for horror fans to discover.

Sayenga made a name for himself in the horror documentary world with Eli Roth’s History of Horror and 101 Greatest Horror Moments of All Time. In this interview, Sayenga shares about what inspired the show, the significance of highlighting the wide spectrum of horror, how Godzilla influenced his career, and what he hopes horror fans to take away from this show.

Bonilla: You have an extensive history with television documentaries.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice director Tim Burton says the comedy horror sequel rescued him from feeling “disillusioned with the movie industry.”

Speaking at the press conference for his film ahead of it opening Venice film festival this evening (August 28), Burton said, “I realised if I’m going to do anything again, I want to do it from my heart. As you grow older, sometimes your life takes a bit of a turn – I lost myself a little bit.

“For me, this movie was a re-energizing, getting back to the things I love doing and the people I love doing it with. I...

September marks Marcello Mastroianni’s centennial, and the Criterion Channel pays respect with a retrospective that puts the expected alongside some lesser-knowns: Monicelli’s The Organizer, Jacques Demy’s A Slightly Pregnant Man, and two by Ettore Scola. There’s also the welcome return of “Adventures In Moviegoing” with Rachel Kushner’s formidable selections, among them Fassbinder’s Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven, Pialat’s L’enfance nue, and Jean Eustache’s Le cochon. In the lead-up to His Three Daughters, a four-film Azazel Jacobs program arrives.

Theme-wise, a set of courtroom dramas runs from 12 Angry Men and Anatomy of a Murder to My Cousin Vinny and Philadelphia; a look at ’30s female screenwriters includes Fritz Lang’s You and Me, McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, and Cukor’s What Price Hollywood? There’s also a giallo series if you want to watch an Argento movie and ask yourself,...

Lamberto Bava’s Demons is one cool cucumber. It’s often hard to tell whether the film is satirizing the cold excess of 1980s horror cinema or indulging it (probably both), and that ambiguity informs even the slacker sequences with latent tension. The premise is simple even for an ultraviolent ghoulie feature: Folks are invited to a mysterious theater for a screening of a horror film and proceed to turn into demons that tear apart the remaining survivors, who soon turn, of course, into more demons.

The Evil Dead is certainly an inspiration, which reflects a cyclical payback of sorts, as Sam Raimi was indebted to Suspiria, and Dario Argento, an executive producer and co-writer of this film, borrowed back on his initial loan, upping the ante even further on the fabulous gore and bladdery effects. This self-referential sense of the narrative eating its own tale is intentional and essential...

Stars: Joe Mayes, Mark Hyde, Claudia Troy, Georgia Anastasia, Ulysses E. Campbell, Julie Kashmanian | Written and Directed by Philip J. Cook

“You just push the handle, drop into T Space, and take off to destinations unknown.” With these words Max Stone introduces us to the world of Ghost Planet. A world where he, his half-brother George, and their sister Julia hunt for technology left behind by the Tesserans.

They were an alien race who mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind ships far beyond anything humans could develop. And, it looks like the trio have found a base full of them. And then a neutron star flares up, forcing them to abandon their discovery.

That was a year ago. Now George has developed some strange tumours, his insurance covers removing them, apart from the 90% deductible that is. And the loan Max took out, with one of his organs as collateral, has come due,...

With the third installment of their Danza Macabra series, the fine, twisted folks at Severin Films shift focus from the boot of Italy to the Iberian peninsula. This collection spotlights four fascinating Spanish examples of the sort of moody gothic filmmaking that Italian directors like Mario Bava and Antonio Margheriti, not to mention Hammer Films in Britain, helped to popularize for international markets.

Rife with reptilian monsters, vampires, zombified Knights Templar, and even a cameo from Frankenstein and his misbegotten creation, these films vary considerably in tone and approach, ranging from rambling shaggy-dog tales to almost esoteric fables. They also differ in how far they’re willing to go with their respective lashings of sex and violence, growing bolder as the restrictions of the Franco regime lifted after the dictator’s passing in 1975.

Writer-director Miguel Madrid’s schizoid Necrophagous, from 1971, divides its time between two principal storylines that barely cohere in the end.