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Stars: Santo, Julio Aldama, Mary Montiel, Santo, Armando Silvestre, Gregorio Casal, Ivonne Govea, Carlos Agostí, Carlos Suarez, Nathanael Leon | Written by Rene Cardona, Jesús Murcielago Velázquez | Directed by Rene Cardona

Santo vs. The Riders of Terror is the 27th entry in the vast Santo franchise, which stands as a cornerstone of Mexican popular culture and cinema. The Santo films feature the legendary luchador El Santo, in a mix of genres – many including action, adventure, and fantastical elements, a combination which has cemented the franchise’s place in the hearts of fans worldwide. This film also comes from the prolific René Cardona, who himself has a fanbase similar in size to that of Santo, making this film a double-header when it comes to fan appreciation!

Speaking of the Santo franchise, Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta is the titular El Santo, a role he began playing in the early 1960s and one that quickly grew into a cultural phenomenon.

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When the dizzying trailer for Babylon dropped, its coke-fueled bacchanal of sex, partying, moviemaking and sleaze sold it as The Day of the Locust meets The Wolf of Wall Street. Marketing can be deceptive, but in this case, turns out that’s an accurate taste of what the whopping three hours and change of Damien Chazelle’s poison-pen letter to 1920s and ‘30s Hollywood delivers, with the freewheeling storytelling of Boogie Nights and a sticky dollop of Lynchian creepiness. No doubt plenty of cool kids will eagerly sign up to be pummeled by the film’s crazed excesses, though just as many will find it exhausting and sour. Even its technical virtuosity feels assaultive.

To all the folks who stomped out any chance of Chazelle’s soulful space-travel drama, First Man, finding an audience by whipping up a fake controversy charging that it was unpatriotic,...

Medusa Deluxe (Thomas Hardiman).The lineup for the 75th-anniversary edition of the festival has been announced, including new films by Helena Wittmann, João Pedro Rodrígues, Aleksandr Sokurov and others, alongside retrospectives, tributes, and much more.Piazza GRANDEAlles über Martin Suter. Ausser die Wahrheit. (Everything About Martin Suter. Everything but the Truth.) (André Schäfer)Annie Colère (Blandine Lenoir)Bullet Train (David Leitch)Compartiment tueurs (The Sleeping Car Murder) (Costa-Gavras)Delta (Michele Vannucci)Home of the Brave (Laurie Anderson)Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk)Last Dance (Delphine Lehericey)Medusa Deluxe (Thomas Hardiman)My Neighbor Adolf (Leon Prudovsky)Paradise Highway (Anna Gutto)Piano Piano (Nicola Prosatore)Printed Rainbow (Gitanjali Rao)Semret (Caterina Mona)Une femme de notre temps (Jean Paul Civeyrac)Vous n'aurez pas ma haine (You Will Not Have My Hate) (Kilian Riedhof)Where the Crawdads Sing (Olivia Newman)Human Flowers of Flesh (Helena Wittmann).Concorso INTERNAZIONALEAriyippu (Declaration) (Mahesh Narayanan)Balıqlara xütbə...

Australia’s premier genre festival – Monster Fest – has unveiled its final wave of films for the 2016 festival, which is set to take place November 24-27 at the Lido Cinemas in Melbourne.

The team of features programmers – which includes festival director Kier-La Janisse, Monster Pictures co-founder Neil Foley, Boston Underground Film Festival Director of Programming Nicole McControversy and writer/programmer/punk legend Chris D. – vetted over 600 features in selecting the 2016 Monster Fest lineup, which includes new crime films Dog Eat Dog and The Hollow Point from Paul Schrader and Gonzalo López-Gallego respectively, gory slasher throwback The Windmill Massacre (reviewed here), the hometown premiere of epic period western The Legend of Ben Hall with cast in person and acclaimed Tiff selections Prevenge and Interchange alongside Fantastic Fest faves such as the Aussie-made yuletide thriller Safe Neighbourhood and the devastating – and polarizing – Playground.

From the press release:

Select panels for the Swinburne University...

Edited by Hans-Åke Lilja, Shining in the Dark: Celebrating Twenty Years of Lilja's Library is exclusive to Cemetery Dance Publications and will feature a Stephen King story that hasn't been released since 1981. We also have updated release details for The Similars, the final wave of films announced at Monster Fest 2016, six photos / details for The Orphanage video game, and a new trailer for Gremlin.

Cemetery Dance Publications' Shining in the Dark Anthology: From Cemetery Dance: "Shining In the Dark: Celebrating Twenty Years of Lilja's Library edited by Hans-Åke Lilja.

About the Book:

Hans-Ake Lilja, the founder of Lilja's Library, has compiled a brand new anthology of horror stories to help celebrate twenty years of running the #1 Stephen King news website on the web!

This anthology includes both original stories like the brand new novella by John Ajvide Lindqvist (Let the Right One In) very rare reprints like "The Blue Air...

With all the good press big budget films get today, We sometimes forget that out there in the cinematic shadows lay some of the worst movies ever laid to film. Today we take you on a voyage into a world of shoddy production value and atrocious acting. Welcome to the… Ten Worst (and undoubtedly Strangest) Movies Ever Made!

*Summaries Courtesy of IMDb*

10. Plan 9 from Outer Space

Premiered: 1958

Directed By: Edward D. Wood Jr.

Summary: Aliens resurrect dead humans as zombies and vampires to stop human kind from creating the Solaranite (a sort of sun-driven bomb).

9. Troll 2

Premiered: 1990

Directed By: Claudio Fragasso

Summary: A young child is terrified to discover that a planned family trip is to be haunted by vile plant-eating monsters out of his worst nightmare.

8. Santa Claus

Premiered: 1959

Directed By: Rene Cardona

Summary: With the aid of Merlin, Santa Claus must defeat the evil machinations of...

Jim Knipfel Dec 24, 2018

Rene Cardona's Santa Claus movie from 1959 is so utterly bizarre that it transcends Christmas.

When the conversation rolls around to bad Christmas movies, there’s of course a broad spectrum from which to choose, Santa Claus (1959) being one of them. Given that nearly every Christmas movie ever made is insufferable to some degree, it’s generally easier, I’ve found, to break things down into categories that stretch from the simply godawful (Jingle All the Way) to the agonizingly painful (A Very Brady Christmas or that Marlo Thomas remake of It’s a Wonderful Life) to the merely baffling (the continued string of Home Alone sequels and reboots).

Of course there are some people who think they can bring the conversation to an abrupt end by pulling out Santa Claus Conquers the Martians as the last word on holiday cinema. There’s simply nothing more to say.

A Most Gloriously And Victoriously Ferronian Christmas To All Of You!!!

Some might wonder: Does the Ferroni Brigade celebrate Christmas together? The answer is: No, as our families have the right to occasionally enjoy our respective presences—there are lives to the Ferroni Brigade beyond the first rows of this island earth's cinemas. But: If we would celebrate together, we'd probably do so by watching René Cardona's relentlessly mind-blowing Santa Claus (1959) while sipping a glass of L'Enclos from our winery of choice, Le Domaine des 2 ânes; after that and if we were in Cologne, we'd pay a visit to our god-donkeys Lisa, Hupsiand Pedro and enjoy their kind and calming company.

As a little Christmas special, we offer a few lists of ours which you haven't seen yet in their entirety: Our complete contributions to the Film Comment Decade Poll. Remember?: In its Jan/Feb 2010-edition, Film Comment featured a massive international Noughties-poll,...

With all the good press big budget films get today, We sometimes forget that out there in the cinematic shadows lay some of the worst movies ever laid to film. Today, B3K takes you on a voyage into a world of shoddy production value and atrocious acting. Welcome to… The Top Ten Worst Movies Ever Made.

*Summaries Courtesy of IMDb*

10. Plan 9 from Outer Space

Premiered: 1958

Directed By: Edward D. Wood Jr.

Summary: Aliens resurrect dead humans as zombies and vampires to stop human kind from creating the Solaranite (a sort of sun-driven bomb).

9. Troll 2

Premiered: 1990

Directed By: Claudio Fragasso

Summary: A young child is terrified to discover that a planned family trip is to be haunted by vile plant-eating monsters out of his worst nightmare.

8. Santa Claus

Premiered: 1959

Directed By: Rene Cardona

Summary: With the aid of Merlin, Santa Claus must defeat the evil machinations of the devil Pitch to ruin Christmas.

With its intertwining themes of plane crash survival, cannibalism, and man-eating sharks, there's a lot for genre fans to like about René Cardona, Jr.'s 1978 mixed bag known as Cyclone.

Wonder what Trembles thought about it? Read on for his take on this adventure thriller best known for its eclectic cast including sex kitten Carroll Baker, five-time Oscar nominee Arthur Kennedy, Lionel Stander (best known as "Max" on the TV show "Hart to Hart"), and Olga Karlatos from Fulci's Zombie.

"Jesus Jerky!"

Discuss Motion Picture Purgatory in the Dread Central forums!

Indie filmmaker Jeff Chitty of Guerilla Entertainment sent along the first word, along with an exclusive, not especially work-safe trailer, behind-the-scenes pics and frame grabs (with “grindhouse-style” visual degradation), from Survive!, his new flick that, he tells us, “is clearly inspired by ’70s exploitation flicks such as Last House On The Left, I Spit On Your Grave and They Call Her One Eye.” You can take in all the visual roughness below.

Chitty, whose previous credits include Roadkill and is who also working on a chiller called Devil’S Fork (see item here), reveals that Survive! (no relation to the Rene Cardona true-life 1976 shocker) rose from the ashes of a different, defunct project. “It was put together to take advantage of time everyone had taken off work to shoot another film called Hellclown, for which the financing never materialized,” he says. “I wrote the script over two days, and completed...