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While many of us may still be feeling the icy chill of winter, Scream Factory already has their sights set on a scare-filled spring, as they've announced new 4K Uhd releases for Skyline, Brotherhood of the Wolf, and The Haunting (1999) this May, as well as a Blu-ray double feature for Conquest of Space and I Married a Monster from Outer Space:

From Scream Factory: When sunrise arrives two hours early in the form of a haunting light from an unknown source, a group of friends watch in terror as people across the city are drawn outside and swept into massive alien ships that have blotted out the L.A. skyline. Now, it will take every survival instinct the group has to elude capture in Skyline, starring Eric Balfour (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Donald Faison (Scrubs) and Scottie Thompson (Star Trek).

Pre-order: https://shoutfactory.com/products/skyline?utm_source=facebook...

The Screen Actors Guild presented legendary comic actor Eddie Cantor with the first annual Life Achievement Award back in 1962. Over the past six decades, the award for ‘outstanding achievement in fostering ideals of the acting profession” has been given to such Hollywood icons as Stan Laurel, Bob Hope, Barbara Stanwyck, Gregory Peck, Jimmy Stewart, Frank Sinatra, James Cagney, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. More recently, Mary Tyler Moore, Charles Durning, Debbie Reynolds, Rita Moreno, Carol Burnett, Helen Mirren and Robert De Niro have received the honor.

Two-time Oscar and three-time Emmy Award winning Sally Field is the latest recipient of the Life Achievement Award. The 76-year-old actress, who came to fame as the ultimate teenager “Gidget” in the 1965-66 ABC sitcom, is currently starring with Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Rita Moreno in the hit feature comedy “80 for Brady.” She appeared with Jim Parsons last year in the drama...

Producer-director Michael Curtiz’s femme fatale noir has a lot going for it — high production values, VistaVision, and new film talent in Tom Tryon, Carol Ohmart, Elaine Stritch & Jody Lawrance. Excellent location shooting and a Nat King Cole song provide authentic Los Angeles atmosphere. But the storyline is ten years out of date. The advertising promoted Ms. Ohmart as a new ’50s sex symbol. She may have caught fire, but the show didn’t.

The Scarlet Hour

Region free Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] #152

1956 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date August 31, 2022 / Available from Amazon Au / 39.95; / Available from Viavision / 39.95

Starring: Carol Ohmart, Tom Tryon, Jody Lawrance, James Gregory, Elaine Stritch, E.G. Marshall, Edward Binns, David Lewis, Billy Gray, Jacques Aubuchon, Scott Marlowe, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Richard Deacon, Benson Fong, Theron Jackson, Almira Sessions.

Cinematography: Lionel Lindon

Costumes: Edith Head

Art Directors: Hal Pereira, Tambi Larsen

Film Editor: Everett Douglas

Original Music: Leith Stevens...

Hollywood’s last big all-star war epic in Black & White? Otto Preminger took a happy film company to Hawaii for this enormous saga about the Naval push in the Pacific Theater of WW2, with none other than John Wayne as the competent commander leading the charge. Soap-opera scenes aside, it’s a thrilling epic directed with Preminger’s well-known reserve. The star-gazing isn’t bad either — Kirk Douglas! Patricia Neal! Henry Fonda! Paula Prentiss! The finish is a huge naval battle with impressive live-action special effects, and given a moody music score by Jerry Goldsmith.

In Harm’s Way

Blu-ray

Paramount Viacom CBS

1965 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 167 min. / Street Date June 29, 2021 / Available from Paramount Movies / 13.99

Starring: John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Patricia Neal, Tom Tryon, Paula Prentiss, Brandon De Wilde, Jill Haworth, Dana Andrews, Stanley Holloway, Burgess Meredith, Franchot Tone, Patrick O’Neal, Carroll O’Connor, Slim Pickens, George Kennedy, Barbara Bouchet.

Cinematography:...

Former Another World writer Jan Merlin died on September 20 in Los Angeles. He was 94.

Born on April 3, 1925, Merlin was a torpedo man aboard U.S. Navy destroyers during World War II. He studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and appeared in the ensemble in the original 1948 Broadway production of "Mister Roberts," starring Henry Fonda.

From 1950-54, Merlin starred as Roger Manning on the kids TV program Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, based on a comic strip.

He moved to Hollywood for a role in Six Bridges to Cross (1955), starring Curtis, then appeared with Mamie Van Doren in Running Wild (1955), with Dale Robertson in A Day of Fury (1956), with Tom Tryon in Screaming Eagles (1956) and with Ann Sheridan in Woman and the Hunter (1957).

In 1958-59, Merlin portrayed Lt. Colin Kirby on The Rough Riders, an ABC series set in the aftermath of the Civil War.

His credits also included the...

On Monday, August 28, 2017, Turner Classic Movies will devote an entire day of their “Summer Under the Stars” series to the late, great Louis Burton Lindley Jr. If that name doesn’t sound familiar, well, then just picture the fella riding the bomb like a buckin’ bronco at the end of Dr. Strangelove…, or the racist taskmaster heading up the railroad gang in Blazing Saddles, or the doomed Sheriff Baker, who gets one of the loveliest, most heartbreaking sendoffs in movie history in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

Lindley joined the rodeo circuit when he was 13 and soon picked up the name that would follow him throughout the length of his professional career, in rodeo and in movies & TV. One of the rodeo vets got a look at the lank newcomer and told him, “Slim pickin’s. That’s all you’re gonna get in this rodeo.

A few weeks before five men were arrested for breaking and entering into Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. the film version of Tom Tryon's popular novel The Other was released in U.S. theaters. Soon enough, the country would be embroiled in a political controversy that led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, but in the film world, all was (relatively) quiet. The month before, William Friedkin's The French Connection was presented with five Academy Awards, including Best Picture; "Theme from Shaft" took home the Oscar for Best Song. The year's early releases included Cabaret, Silent Running, What's Up, Doc?, Slaughterhouse-Five, Pink Flamingos, Fritz the Cat, and The Godfather; the latter dominated the box office when it...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

By John M. Whalen

Back in the 1950s, before he became a legend, filmmaker Sam Peckinpah (“The Wild Bunch,” “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia,” and “The Killer Elite”) wrote scripts for TV westerns, including “Gunsmoke,” “The Rifleman,” and “Tombstone Territory.” His reputation grew and in 1957 he wrote his first screenplay entitled “The Glory Guys” which was based on Hoffman Birney’s novel, “The Dice of God.” The book was a fictional account of Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, with all names changed. The script went unproduced for almost eight years, and in the meantime Sam had moved on, directing features including “The Deadly Companions” (1960), “Ride the High Country” (1962) and “Major Dundee” (1965).

You would think that with that growing resume, Peckinpah would have been able to direct anything he wanted to, but such was far from the case. “Bloody Sam,” as he was called, affectionately by his fans,...

I don’t like rituals, period. Whether straitlaced (Christian) or darkly purposed (Satanic), I just find them creepy…and off. So while I won’t stand on ceremony, I will watch, with fascination, films that trot out such pageantry. One of my favorites is a two part TV mini-series, The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978). Oh, and its horror, but I’m sure you already guessed that.

Originally airing on NBC Monday, January 23rd (in the NBC Monday Night at the Movies slot) and Tuesday the 24th, 1978, Dark Secret was up against the CBS juggernaut of M*A*S*H/One Day at a Time/Lou Grant. But while many were watching Hawkeye, Schneider, et al crack wise, something insidious was brewing over at The Peacock.

Pull out your yellowed copy of TV Guide and let’s have a look shall we?

The Dark Secret Of Harvest Home (Monday-Tuesday, 9pm,...

Do you like my choice of leading image?  'We're the Glory Guys! Eee-Yow!' What is surely the most generic cavalry western of all time is actually from a screenplay by Sam Peckinpah. Twilight Time's extras have a lot to say about that, and so does Savant. The Glory Guys Blu-ray Twilight Time 1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 113 min. / Street Date September 6, 2016 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95 Starring Tom Tryon, Harve Presnell, Senta Berger, James Caan, Andrew Duggan, Slim Pickens, Peter Breck, Jeanne Cooper, Michael Anderson Jr., Adam Williams, Wayne Rogers, Michael Forest, Paul Birch, Stephen Chase, Claudio Brook. Cinematography James Wong Howe Cinematography Ernst R. (Tom) Rolf, Melvin Shapiro Original Music Riz Ortolani Written by Sam Peckinpah from the novel by Hoffman Birney Produced by Arthur Gardner, Arnold Laven, Jules V. Levy Directed by Arnold Laven

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Glory Guys is as generic and standard-issue...

Distributor TWC-Radius managed a difficult feat with an inspired marketing campaign for the release of foreign arthouse horror film Goodnight Mommy, the excellent directorial debut of duo Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz. In its seventy days of release during its Us theatrical run, the film racked up over a million in ticket sales and enjoyed some excellent word of mouth attention. The Venice premiered item has also acquired notable critical acclaim and, at the time of its Blu-ray release, has made it to the shortlist of possible nominees for a Best Foreign Language Academy Award nomination. Grisly, uncomfortable, and beautifully executed, it’s an unprecedented amount of attention considering the subject matter.

In the isolated Austrian countryside, nine-year-old twins Lukas and Elias (Lukas and Elias Schwarz) live alone with their mother (Susanne Wuest). Recently, she’s undergone cosmetic surgery, her face completely bandaged as she attempts to recover peacefully in their quiet home.

Mom Without a Face: Fiala/Franz’s Fiction Debut a Mesmerizing Slice of Psychological Horror

Once you’re made aware that Goodnight Mommy is the fictional directorial debut from directing tandem Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz (partner to and writer of the works of Ulrich Seidl). A delightfully perverse purveyor of Austrian social dysfunction, you’ll know to expect something kind of twisted and bizarre. Fiala/Franz certainly delivers with an eerie portrait of identical twin horror that will eventually rank as one of the more notable titles in the slim subgenre. Effectively grotesque and downright chilling by the time it spits out its final frames, Franz unleashes her own brand of sinister familial interactions that proves to surpass even Seidl’s cynical worldview.

In the isolated Austrian countryside, nine-year-old twins Lukas and Elias (Lukas and Elias Schwarz) live alone with their mother (Susanne Wuest). Recently, she’s undergone cosmetic surgery,...

★★☆☆☆ Identical twins are a staple of the horror genre pantry, a corporeal conduit in which to explore the dichotomy between good and evil. Frequently presenting an image of innocence alongside a capricious, often deadly parallel, the audience is forced to look beyond the superficial for deeper understanding. In the eerie, yet tepid psychological horror The Other (1972), based on the bestseller by actor Tom Tryon, the presence of identical twins allows director Robert Mulligan the perfect outlet in which to identify and exorcise the darkness that dwells within all of us. Played by real-life identical twins Chris and Martin Udvarnoky, Holland and Niles become absorbed in a mystical 'game' they learn from their grandmother.

Tuesdays are when new books are typically released, and horror fans usually don’t have too much trouble finding something to read. There is Amazon of course and publishers like Samhain and Cemetery Dance…

We also boast authors ranging from "The King" himself to Dan Simmons, Robert McCammon, the late Thomas Tryon, Tim Curran, Aussies Stephen Irwin, Brett McBean, and Aaron Dries as well as Brits such as David Moody, anthologist Stephen Jones, and Mark Morris, to name just a very few.

But what if you long for the paperback originals which seemed to flood bookstores back in the 80s or want to read even earlier horror that is long out of print? What to do? Well, you turn to Valancourt Books to assuage those yearnings. And we recently spoke with Ryan Cagle, one half of the publishing team that brings those long unavailable titles to life for readers to enjoy again,...

It's not uncommon for movie and TV stars to make the jump from the screen to the printed page; many well-known actors have capitalized on their name recognition to help boost their profiles as emerging authors. Notable examples include Viggo Mortensen (Lord of the Rings), who found success with his self-published poetry; James Franco (This is the End) recently rolled out a well-received short story collection entitled Palo Alto; and Ethan Hawke (Sinister, The Purge) has won acclaim for the novels The Hottest State and Ash Wednesday. While we don't hear nearly enough about actors from the world of horror and sci-fi making a successful transition to those same genres in print, it's not as rare a phenomenon as you might think. Let's examine the literary legacies of three notable horror stars who carved out thrilling new careers as horror writers... Thomas Tryon Genre Role: I Married a Monster from Outer Space...

Robert Mulligan’s The Other (1972), based upon the 1971 novel of the same name by author Thomas Tryon who also penned the film’s screenplay, is a gem of a film. Once a staple of weekend independent television station airings in the late 1970’s which I only caught glimpses of, I managed to finally see it in its entirety on August 17, 1985 on an early morning television airing while visiting my grandmother just after … Continue reading →

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Ostensibly The Other (1972) could be lumped in with several other “bad seed” movies that popped up during the 1970s like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen. But writer Thomas Tryon’s screenplay (based on his own novel) differs from those successful films in two very significant ways: 1) It’s told almost exclusively from a child’s perspective and 2) The guy with the pointy horns and forked tail is nowhere in sight.

It’s the former that plays the biggest role in the film’s structure. In a movie about keeping secrets, Tryon’s script struggles to keep a real whopper under wraps until about the one-hour mark. Up until then, The Other could pass for an elegiac coming-of-age drama set against the backdrop of bucolic rural America just before the onset of World War II. The idea of true “evil” arising in such an unlikely setting is one...

Blu-ray Release Date: Oct. 8, 2013

Price: Blu-ray $Tba

Studio: Twilight Time

Uta Hagen learns her grandsons are connected to a series of fatal accidents in 1972's The Other.

The 1972 horror-mystery film The Other, one of the creepier “twins” fright flicks of the Seventies, makes its Stateside Blu-ray debut from Twilight time in October.

It’s the summer of 1935, and twins Niles (Chris Udvarnoky) and Holland (Martin Udvarnoky) spend all their time on the family farm in Connecticut , sometimes congregating in the cellar, though it is prohibited due to their father’s death by falling down the cellar stairs. Their grief-stricken mother (Diana Muldaur) passes most days in her bedroom, while their sister, Torrie (Jenny Sullivan), and her husband, Rider ( John Ritter), are expecting a child soon. Then, the first of a serious of fatal accidents occurs…

Based on actor-turned-novelist Thomas Tryon’s novel of the same name and adapted for the screen by the author,...

Randolph Scott movies: From Westerns to Cary Grant / Irene Dunne comedy Handsome, granite-faced Randolph Scott is Turner Classic Movies’ next great choice in its "Summer Under the Stars" film series. Monday, August 19, 2013, is Randolph Scott Day, which begins and ends with Westerns. That shouldn’t be surprising, for although Scott was initially cast in a variety of roles and movie genres (including Westerns), he became exclusively a Western star in the late ’40s, sticking to that genre until his retirement in 1962 following the release of Sam Peckinpah’s elegiac Ride the High Country, which TCM will be showing on Monday evening. Joel McCrea at his very best and Mariette Hartley co-star. (See “On TCM: Randolph Scott Westerns.”) (Photo: Randolph Scott ca. 1945.) Many of Scott’s Westerns were routine fare, including Badman’s Territory (1946), which kicks off Randolph Scott Day. Some, however, have become classics of the genre, especially his late...

Tfh Fan Week with Steve Senski! continues at Trailers from Hell, today with Kickstarter backer Senski introducing Robert Mulligan's 1972 horror film of good-seed and bad-seed twins, "The Other."This creepy, bucolic period horror film didn’t make much of an impression theatrically, but was rediscovered through late-night television airings. Although former actor turned best-selling author Tom Tryon wrote the screenplay from his own novel, he professed to be disappointed with To Kill a Mockingbird director Robert Mulligan’s nostalgia-laced, Ray Bradburyish handling of it. Composer Jerry Goldsmith’s music score was heavily edited in the release version.

James Wolcott's right on this one: "Even if, like me, you thought you never needed or wanted to read another votive offering to Marilyn Monroe, lay aside thy doubts and reservations and attend to Jacqueline Rose's essay in the London Review of Books, 'A Rumbling of Things Unknown,' a full-course meal of a meditation." He quotes a couple of passages, but the gist is this: "It is something of a truism for psychoanalysis that one member of a family can carry the unconscious secrets of a whole family, can fall sick, as it were, on their behalf. My question is: for whom or what in 1950s and early 1960s America was Marilyn Monroe carrying the can?"

More reading. Sean O'Hagan interviews William Klein for the Guardian.

DVD/Blu-ray. Dave Kehr reviews three releases for the New York Times this week, the first from Olive Films: "Often overlooked...

It's that time of year again when the weather is horrifically hot and the sun is just too damn bright for us horror fans. Time to curl up with a good book in the darkness of your home and crank up the AC. With that in mind, here is a hopefully helpful list of "Summer Reading to Chill Your Bones".

This is definitely not a complete catalogue, and I would love to hear from folks who have their own recommendations so please feel free to add your comments below.

And away we go...

1) The Passage by Justin Cronin. This is turning into The book to read this summer, and for good reason. It is one part Stephen King's The Stand combined with Robert McCammon's Swan Song and a soupcon of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The first part of a trilogy with the movie rights already purchased by Ridley Scott,...

Horror fans love this time of the year. For those of us not living in La, there's the chill in the air, the colorful leaves, pumpkins everywhere, dead cornfields to explore … if you dare. So, in honor of Our official holiday, I have come up with a list of books and some movies every horror fan should at least take a look at, if not outright add to your book or DVD library.

Without further ado (and in no particular order):

Creepy Places to Visit:

Creepy Crawls: A Horror Fiend’s Travel Guide by Leon Marcelo, Santa Monica Press, 380 pages

I Love this book!! Leon Marcelo travels the world, literally, to find places of horror both real and fictional. Rome to visit the Dario Argento Profondo Rosso Shop then to George Romero’s Pennsylvania and H.P. Lovecraft’s New England. Marcelo also covers Stephen King country, Poe’s Baltimore,...

Director Robert Mulligan, beloved by actors for his low-key style and temperament behind the camera, has passed away at age 83. Mulligan began directing in live TV productions in the 1950s but graduated to feature films with the acclaimed production of Fear Strikes Out. His career highlight was helming the 1962 classic screen adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Under his direction, star Gregory Peck won the Best Actor Academy Award for his immortal performance as Atticus Finch in the film. Mulligan never directed blockbuster hits, but several of his productions proved to be extremely popular with audiences and critics. Among them: Come September, Love With the Proper Stranger, Baby, The Rain Must Fall  (the latter two starring Steve McQueen), Up the Down Staircase, Summer of '42 and the bittersweet comedy Same Time, Next Year.  However, some of his best work remained under-rated, including...