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Prompted by the massive success of the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, ABC released dozens of thrillers and horror movies under their Movie of the Week banner between 1969 and 1975. Starting in 1973, the network branched out into late-night programming intended to compete with talk show king Johnny Carson over on NBC, and the five feature-length telefilms collected as The Classic Ghosts by Kino Cult originally aired in that slot.

These telefilms were shot live on two-inch tape in a manner akin to daytime dramas, which does lead to the occasional flubbed line of dialogue. Furthering the comparison, two of the movies were directed by Lela Swift, who helmed over half of Dark Shadows’s approximately 1,200 episodes. Gloria Monty, who directed two others, went on to radically reshape the floundering soap General Hospital in the late ’70s. It’s notable that the creative team behind the telefilms were mostly women. Besides directors Swift and Monty,...

Airing as part of ABC’s Wide World of Mystery in 1973, five-part horror series The Classic Ghosts has been rescued from obscurity for a Blu-ray release on October 29.

Bloody Disgusting is teaming up with Kino Lorber to give away three copies of the Blu-ray set.

Click here to enter!

This contest is open to US residents only. One entry permitted per address. Three winners will be drawn on October 29.

Produced by broadcast pioneer Jacqueline Babbin, The Classic Ghosts has been preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

“The Haunting of Rosalind” (65 min) is directed by Lela Swift, based on a story by Henry James. Pamela Payton-Wright, Susan Sarandon, Beatrice Straight, and Frank Converse star.

“The Screaming Skull” (67 min) is directed by Gloria Monty, based on a story by Francis Marion Crawford. David McCallum, Vince Gardenia, and Carrie Nye star.

“The Deadly Visitor” (66 min) is directed by Lela Swift, based...

Late-night horror series The Classic Ghosts has rarely been seen since airing on ABC’s Wide World of Mystery in 1973, but that’s about to change.

The UCLA Film & Television Archive has preserved all five installments, coming to Blu-ray on October 29 via Kino Lorber’s Kino Cult line. Watch the exclusive trailer below.

Produced by broadcast pioneer Jacqueline Babbin, The Classic Ghosts was celebrated upon its debut for being made by a predominantly female crew, including trailblazing television directors Gloria Monty (General Hospital) and Lela Swift (Studio One).

Shot on videotape in the style of a soap opera, with expressive and colorful production design, The Classic Ghosts has an immediacy and otherworldliness akin to Dark Shadows — not surprising since two of the directors (Swift and Henry Kaplan) directed hundreds of episodes of the classic horror TV series.

The two-disc set includes interviews with Mark Quigley (John H. Mitchell Television...

Released by David Bowie’s estate in 2022, Divine Symmetry, subtitled “An Alternative Journey Through Hunky Dory,” is a 4-disc collection chronicling the year’s work leading to David Bowie’s fourth studio album. Demos, previously unreleased tracks, and live recordings capture the sound of a vision in a state of flux.

As its lead single, “Changes,” makes clear, Hunky Dory, released on Dec. 17, 1971, presented a notable metamorphosis for the artist who would go on to define transformation. This worked against Bowie as his label, RCA Records, worried he would reframe his image again, and did not promote the single. Hunky Dory didn’t chart until after the release of Bowie’s 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust.

Bowie had only landed one hit during his tenure at Mercury Records, and it would have marked him as a novelty singer. “Space Oddity” charted five days before the Apollo 11 launch in 1969. His third album,...

Missing the heatwave? With the release of Sara Dosa’s hotly tipped new documentary Fire of Love, we round up the most epic, exploding-mountain movies ever made

Steve Reeves seeks vengeance for his father’s murder and Vesuvius erupts in a shower of sparks in this handsome peplum epic, no more faithful to Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1834 novel than countless other films that borrowed its title. Sergio Leone made his directorial debut when the original director fell ill.

Ivana Miloš, In the Flower Basket (2022), monotype on paper, 33 x 24 cmTHE Sex Of ROSESFlower boy T, n*gga that's meRooted from the bottom, bloomed into a treeTook a little while, n*gga making leavesKeep 'em in the branches so my family can eat—"Where This Flower Blooms," Tyler, the Creator A long time ago somebody messed with people’s minds and put into their heads the idea that women, and especially female sexual organs, look like flowers. Botanists, anatomists, and pornographers stand no chance against decades of the birds and the bees and all the metaphorical, flowery language that conceals bodily realities to the point of alienation where the flower really somehow looks like a vulva to those that have either never really looked at a flower (which flower anyway?) nor at a female body. Probably neither. But then, are we not all blind? This is not Charlie Chaplin’s fault,...

Author Molly Ringle has won the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which writers compete to pen the worst opening sentence to an imaginary novel. The contest is named after Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who began his 1830 novel Paul Clifford with the phrase, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Ringle’s winning line, meanwhile, reads:

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss — a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.