J.R. Bookwalter’s shot-on-video horror flick Kingdom of the Vampire (1991) has its exsanguinated heart in the right place. And really, if you think you can make a better movie for $2500, be my guest. (Hell, half of Hollywood can’t make a better movie if you spot them six zeros.)
#1 by Joshua on November 15, 2007 - 3:02 am
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How on Earth do you get your hands on, much less even know about, movies like this? Do you have some sort of secret underground connection?
#2 by Blake Matthews on November 15, 2007 - 6:03 am
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When I ran my own website, they came after me…well, only one did (Pamela Sutch).
#3 by Nathan Shumate on November 15, 2007 - 7:32 am
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I’ve had some contact with J.R. Bookwalter over the years, and he’s just released a double-feature DVD of the original KotV and a remake made this year by Canadian micro-budgeter Brett Kelly. This could seriously be in your neighborhood Hollywood Video, for all I know. (Though probably only one copy.)
#4 by lyzard on November 15, 2007 - 1:07 pm
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What I admire is your ability to keep your perspective and honesty when you’re dealing with micro-budget and/or amateur productions. I did start dabbling at one point, but gave it up the first time I got one where I could literally think of nothing good to say. I just felt awful, and decided then it really wasn’t my metier.
#5 by Nathan Shumate on November 15, 2007 - 2:19 pm
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And in your further defense, you could easily have been watching one that was utterly godawful. Lord knows they’re out there.
#6 by Songino on November 15, 2007 - 7:10 pm
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Metier? I just learned a new word.
#7 by Nathan Shumate on November 15, 2007 - 8:41 pm
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Metier? It’s the metiest!
#8 by KeithA on November 16, 2007 - 11:58 am
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I used to be nice to micro-budget filmmakers and cut them way mroe slack than I probably should. But then, after so many were so awful (at the script level, which is free for most of them so the budget doesn’t count), and since so many are on DVD now,I decided to use the following: are you asking people to pay $20 for your DVD? Then you don’t deserve to be cut any more slack than any other movie.
#9 by Blake Matthews on November 16, 2007 - 12:05 pm
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I think Alpha Video started distributing microbudget horror films in addition to public domain films. There were some odd trailers on my Fire Monster against the Son of Hercules DVD. Anyone here catch any of those?
#10 by El Santo on November 17, 2007 - 11:01 am
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“I think Alpha Video started distributing microbudget horror films in addition to public domain films. There were some odd trailers on my Fire Monster against the Son of Hercules DVD. Anyone here catch any of those?”
They have indeed– as have Brentwood and Mill Creek. You know those 50-movie box sets the latter company issues? The second-most recent, called “Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares,” and released under their Pendulum Pictures label, includes no fewer than five Todd Sheets movies! The follow-up, “Tomb of Terror,” has but a single Sheets film to its credit, but I presume that shortcoming to be fully counterbalanced by the presence of two movies by a guy who calls himself “Bill Zebub.”
#11 by Blake Matthews on November 17, 2007 - 11:32 am
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I remember looking at the older box sets and seeing horror films listed that I hadn’t ever heard of. I thought I was way behind on my straight-to-video horror films.
#12 by El Santo on November 17, 2007 - 2:05 pm
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In the case of the older sets, it’s more likely that you’re behind on your 30-year-old, made-for-TV horror films.
#13 by Blake Matthews on November 17, 2007 - 2:23 pm
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Although to be honest, I’m behind on pratically everything regarding horror except for reading reviews about it once in a while.
#14 by Matthew Fudge on November 19, 2007 - 5:20 am
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those 50-cd box sets are great in principle….but…an awful lot of the prints appear to be a straight rip of a 3rd generation vhs copy that spent ten years in a skip with sound that has been filtered through a mattress.
#15 by Blake Matthews on November 19, 2007 - 11:11 am
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I still kick myself for not having bought a 20-DVD box set full of kung fu movies, including Sammo Hung’s “Don’t Give a Damn” (aka Burger Cop) and “Showdown at Cotton Mill.”
#16 by lyzard on November 19, 2007 - 3:48 pm
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But in their defence, those boxes do have a lot of obscure stuff that isn’t likely to get any release elsewhere. I buy them because of that, and also as a cheap way of checking out movies I haven’t seen and don’t want to invest money for a better copy of sight unseen.
#17 by Blake Matthews on November 19, 2007 - 5:36 pm
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May I ask you what were included among the most satisfying of the obscure titles?
#18 by John Doe on November 19, 2007 - 6:45 pm
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Well, for me it was “Eeegah”, “Wasp Woman”, four or five early Gamera flicks, and a couple three Starman hurters.
#19 by Blake Matthews on November 19, 2007 - 6:51 pm
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I haven’t gotten up the courage to watch “Eeegah” or “Cosmos: War of the Planets.” But I do credit it for exposing me to Gamera vs. Viras and a number of peplum films.
#20 by lyzard on November 19, 2007 - 7:03 pm
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I’m thinking more of all those little thrillers and borderline horror movies from the early 1930s that were made by the smaller studios.
#21 by El Santo on November 20, 2007 - 3:32 pm
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“May I ask you what were included among the most satisfying of the obscure titles?”
I have three of the Mill Creek sets: “Horror Classics,” “Sci-Fi Classics,” and “Chilling Classics;” “Horror Classics” is the only one I’ve fully digested so far. What I liked best about that collection was getting so many of the old Producers’ Releasing Corporation movies in one go. Yes, many of them totally suck. However, some (The Mad Monster especially) suck in a most entertaining manner, and there were a couple (Bluebeard and Dead Men Walk) that I found surprisingly effective. There were also several non-PRC obscurities from “Horror Classics” that really won me over. The Vampire Bat tosses all the most interesting elements of Universal and Warner-First National’s first-generation horror talkies into a blender, and pulls out something a great deal more entertaining than most of the films it rips off; The Amazing Mr. X is a very peculiar late-40’s thriller that turns the exasperating old phony-psychic routine inside out by letting the audience in on the scam from the beginning; Tormented is a Bert I. Gordon movie that plays more like William Castle; Bloodlust! is a charmingly vicious drive-in reworking of The Most Dangerous Game; and the Vincent Price version of The Bat is so much better than its reputation would have it that I can scarcely believe all the other people who have dissed it over the years saw the same movie as I did. In the sci-fi box, I think my favorites so far are Horrors of Spider Island (turn-of-the-60’s German sleaze at its finest), Bride of the Gorilla (a shockingly well-done Val Lewton ripoff from the producer of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla), and the two competing Corman-supervised re-edits of Planet of Storms (Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women). I’m also really looking forward to Warning from Space, Daiei’s riff on The Day the Earth Stood Still, which was also the first Japanese sci-fi movie ever shot in color.
#22 by Blake Matthews on November 20, 2007 - 5:09 pm
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I have Warning from Space in my collection , waiting to be watched.
#23 by Tom Meade on November 21, 2007 - 3:50 am
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I just watched the Bat last night, and while it wasn’t brilliant I can’t really see why anyone would argue that it was any less than “okay”. I mean, Agnes Moorhead was so good in it! And it wasn’t hard to guess the killer, but at the same time there were enough balls up in the air to make being uncertain worthwhile.
#24 by Matthew Fudge on November 21, 2007 - 4:36 am
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The Horror box is much better than the sci-fi one. While the sci-fi contains just as many oddities they tend to fall on the boring rather than entertaining side of the line. Having said that there are a few which boggle the mind.