Parky at the Pictures (DVD 31/10/2013)

This atmospheric twosome pale, however, beside Bava's interpretation of Ivan Tolstoy's `The Wurdulak', which accompanies Eastern European nobleman Mark Damon as his gallop across the lush countryside is interrupted by the discovery of a headless corpse with a dagger in its back. Taking the cadaver to the nearest farmhouse, Damon learns that the victim is a notorious Turkish vampire who has been conquered by patriarch Boris Karloff. However, he gave Susy Andersen, Massimo Righi, Rika Dialina and Glauco Onorato strict instructions to slaughter him if he returned home after five days because he would almost certainly have been turned into a `wurdalak' - a nosferatu who feeds primarily on the blood of its loved ones. Convinced their father is fine when he finally makes his return, the quartet come to regret their trust, as does Damon, who has become besotted with Andersen.

Exquisitely photographed in Technicolor by Ubaldo Terzano and impeccably designed on a tight budget by Riccardo Domenici, this is not only visually sumptuous, but it also showcases Bava's mastery of supernatural, giallo and gothic horror. Moreover, it demonstrates a restraint that Cyril Frankel admirably matches in the 1966 Hammer offering, The Witches, which was adapted from the Norah Lofts novel, The Devil's Own, which she wrote under the pseudonym, Peter Curtis. Marking Nigel Kneale's return to the studio for the first time since he scripted Val Guest's The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), this was also Joan Fontaine's final feature and she gives a typically skittish performance as the missionary teacher who suffers a nervous breakdown after being confronted by some African tribesmen wearing voodoo masks. Returning to Britain to recover, she is hired by siblings Alec McCowen and Kay Walsh to run their small private school in the remote village of Heddaby. But she quickly becomes disconcerted by the ruins of the church and the way in which grandmother Gwen Ffrangcon Davies and the locals treat 14 year-old Ingrid Boulting and Fontaine even begins to question her sanity when a headless doll keeps dogging her path.

Having acquired the rights to the book, Fontaine struggled to find willing backers and came to Hammer as a last resort. She saw the story as more of a detection mystery than an outright horror and she is more than a little let down by a by-numbers scenario (which Kneale insisted was chosen over his more parodic first draft) and Frankel's direction in the latter stages. Fontaine evokes memories of vulnerable heroines past and is well supported by the sinister Walsh and Ffrangcon Davies, and by McCowen, whose clerical delusions add a quirky CofE subtext to a narrative that rather clumsily blends traditional notions of witchcraft with exotic paganism. But, while some may try to claim this as an overlooked gem that influenced the likes of Terence Fisher's The Devil Rides Out (1968), its lacks suspense and menace and its commercial failure prompted Hammer to return to its gothic roots.

One monster Hammer didn't revive went on the rampage in Terence Fisher's The Mummy (1959), which brought a trademark splash of Technicolor to a story originally told by Universal in the early 1930s. Sadly, Karl Freund's 1932 Boris Karloff vehicle was not one of the studio's more compelling chillers and this revisitation owes more to Christy Cabanne's The Mummy's Hand (1940), in which onetime cowboy star essayed the bandaged Kharis. Whatever its provenance, Jimmy Sangster's 1890s version is similarly hamstrung by a dullish plot, which largely confounds even the best efforts of such stalwarts as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

When archaeologist Felix Aylmer is committed to an asylum after suffering a breakdown on reading an ancient scroll, son Peter Cushing and brother Raymond Huntley decide that the tomb of Ananka, high priestess of Karnak, is cursed and seal it off. However, disciple George Pastell is furious with the interlopers for disturbing sacred ground and follows them back to Britain and raises a lost crate of relics from a swamp in order to unleash the vengeful Kharis (Lee), whose killing spree is only halted when he notices the resemblance between his 4000 year-old queen and Cushing's wife, Yvonne Furneaux.

A flashback, slickly photographed by Jack Asher on Bernard Robinson's plush sets, explains how Kharis had his tongue severed out of loyalty to Ananka. But, while Lee expertly uses his eyes to convey the phantom's anguish and his imposing physique to menace Cushing during a thrilling library fight sequence, this lurches between set-pieces and convoluted explanations rather than flowing suspensefully. Nevertheless, it represents an improvement on its Universal forebears and it's certainly superior to Harold Young's The Mummy's Tomb (1942), Reginald LeBorg's The Mummy's Ghost and Leslie Goodwins's The Mummy's Curse (both 1944), whose eponymous lead, Lon Chaney, Jr., contributes his disconcertingly hulking presence to Jack Hill's solo directorial debut, Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told, which was completed in 1964, but sat on a shelf for four years after the producers went bankrupt.

Apparently, the bookers attending the distribution screening fled before the half-hour mark and it's easy to see why these white, middle-aged gentlemen (who probably considered Roger Corman strong meat) might have blenched at scenes that have since become the stuff of cult legend. Protected by loyal chauffeur, Lon Chaney, Jr., siblings Beverly Washburn, Jill Banner and Sid Haig are afflicted by Merrye's Syndrome, a rare neurological condition rooted in in-breeding that causes sufferers from the age of 10 to regress into an increasingly infantile and then primitive state. However, distant cousins Quinn K. Redeker and Carol Ohmart have no idea about the condition when they arrive with lawyer Karl Schanzer and his secretary, Mary Mitchell, to remove the trio from their dilapidated mansion so it can be sold to developers for a handsome profit.

Messenger Mantan Moreland might have warned them, but he fell victim to Banner's love of playing `spider', a game in which she catches people in her web (actually a large net) before dispatching her with a knife. Consequently, when they fail to conclude their business, the outsiders decides spend the night in the old dark house, with the sneering Ohmart and the cigar-chomping Schanzer initially being left alone as the wondrously Redeker takes Mitchell out to dinner.

This is worth seeing for any number of reasons, among them the sight of Haig in his Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, of Banner delighting in ensnaring her prey and of the world-weary, but devoted Chaney singing the theme tune to himself before trying to convince his charges that hating people isn't nice. But, for all the gleeful excess of the performances and the ingenuity of cinematographer Albert Taylor, production designer Ray Storey and make-up artist Elliott Fayad, the plaudits have to go to Hill, who not only wrote a macabre saga that was several years ahead of its time, but also completed it for the princely sum of $60,000.

Murderous juveniles also infest one of David Cronenberg's finest body horrors, The Brood (1979), whose vicious assault on psychiatry is complemented by a twisted treatise on mother love that should have placed Nola Carveth alongside Norma Bates and Beverly Sutphin in the annals of gruesome screen matriarchs. Yet, while Samantha Eggar excels, her performance is greatly aided by the special effects make-up devised by Jack Young, particularly in the climactic birthing scene.

Eggar is undergoing treatment at Oliver Reed's Somafree Institute, where he practices a technique known as psychoplasmics that causes patients to manifest their psychological distress in physiological form. Prone to uncontrollable rages when she thinks back on the abuse she suffered at the hands of her alcoholic mother, Nuala Fitzgerald, Eggar proves equally angry with father Harry Beckman for failing to protect her. So, when the pair are killed by what appear to be savage children, Eggar's ex-husband, Art Hindle, becomes convinced that she is no longer fit to care for their daughter, Cindy Hinds. But Hinds is abducted shortly after her teacher, Susan Hogan, is slain and Hindle has to forge an unholy alliance with Reed to confound Eggar and the parthenogenetically born infants who   psychically pick up on her fury and seek to alleviate it through slaughter.

The sequence in which Hindle discovers the dormitory full of diminutive grotesques and witnesses Eggar deliver another child from an external pyschoplasmically-induced womb is classic Cronenberg and deeply disturbing. But there is much to unnerve here, whether it is Oliver Reed's calculatingly modulated performance or the appearance of small welts on Hinds's skin in the final scene, which suggest that this is far from the end of the story. However, this is Eggar's picture and the sight of her licking clean her hirsute offspring as Hindle tries to reason with her to give Reed time to cull her brood.

Produced around the time that Cronenberg was fighting for custody of his own daughter, this is the most classical horror in his canon. Yet, despite the teasing finale, he has never been tempted to make a sequel. Sam Raimi, on the other hand, returned to his 1981 original to produce a hybrid mini-remake and sequel in Evil Dead II (1987), a deliciously darkly parody that refuses to stint on the gore and the pitiless violence. Thanks to the 1984 Video Recordings Act, The Evil Dead was branded a `video nasty' and Raimi struggled to find funding for a scenario that would eventually be realised as the concluding part in what came to be a trilogy, Army of Darkness (1992).  However Stephen King was such a fan of the misadventures of the five college students trapped in a cabin on a remote island that he persuaded Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis to bankroll the picture, even though Raimi had just turned down the chance to direct an adaptation of King's Richard Bachman novel, Thinner.

The action opens with a brisk recap as Bruce Campbell and girlfriend Denise Bixler settle in for a romantic stay in a log cabin and he ruins everything by playing a tape of archaeology professor John Peaks reading passages from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, a book of the dead that unleashes an evil force that possesses Bixler and causes Campbell to decapitate her with a shovel. Even though he survives his own possession, Campbell is still forced to sever his right hand with a chainsaw and he is recovering from this ordeal when he is joined by Peaks's daughter, Sarah Berry, and research partner Richard Domeier, who have found some new pages from the Necronomicon.

Berry and Domeier have been guided through the woods by Dan Hicks and Kassie DePaiva and they believe Campbell to be a fugitive killer when she shoots at them. But he explains what has been going on and they also learn that Peaks's wife (Lou Hancock) was buried in the basement after she succumbed to the marauding evil. Domeier and DaPaiva soon fall victim to a renewed onslaught and Hicks is brutalised by Hancock, who has evolved into a ravenous long-necked monster (Ted Raimi)  But, while Campbell and Berry conspire to vanquish the creature and dispatch the evil force through a time portal, Campbell gets swept away, too, and finds himself in the Levant in 1300 and he is hailed hero by a band of Crusader knights when he blasts a deadite with his gun.

Boasting exceptional camerawork by Peter Deming and make-up effects by Mark Shostrom, this is a dizzying hurtle of through a realm of horrific hilarity that fully merits its reputation as a modern genre classic. The stop-motion animation and visual effects work are also notable (particularly during Campbell's aerial zoom through the forest and DaPaiva's encounter with some moving trees), as are the splendidly committed performances of the ever-watchable Campbell and his sporting co-stars. But, while this occasionally seems gleefully manic, Raimi's distinctive brand of slasher slapstick is fiendishly clever, as he often depicts the action from the perspective of the baleful force and even uses the lurching visuals and tilting frames to suggest its eagerness to pass into the audience's world. Thus, this is not only a thrillingly visceral movie, but it is also a canny meditation on the horror maker's power over both the characters and those watching them squirm.

The excellence of Raimi's direction and the acuity of his approach quickly becomes evident on viewing Evil Dead, the debuting Uruguayan Fede Álvarez's 2013 reboot of the 1981 original. Infinitely gorier and more serious than its riotous predecessor, this benefts from a bigger budget and some state-of-the-art visuals. But, while it may be superior to such remakes as Marcus Nispel's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Andrew Douglas's The Amityville Horror (2005), Alejandre Aja's The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Dave Meyers's The Hitcher (2007) and Samuel Bayer's A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), this is a lot less entertaining and engaging than Raimi's low-budget bow and no amount of dismemberment and disfigurement can replace the sheer exuberance of Bruce Campbell's star-making performance.

Determined to help junkie sister Jane Levy kick her heroin habit, mechanic Shiloh Fernandez hires a cabin in the Michigan woods and invites girlfriend Elizabeth Blackmore, nurse Jessica Lucas and teacher Lou Taylor Pucci to provide back-up. However, Pucci finds a book of the dead in the cellar and, ignoring the warnings in the text, begins reciting lines without heed to the mayhem they might cause. When Levy starts acting strangely (after being abused by some rapacious vines), everyone presumes it is part of her cold turkey. But, soon, everyone is showing signs of possession and using implements knowingly noted in the opening scenes to inflict damage on themselves and each other.

While this may not be a slavish retool, Álvarez and cinematographer Aaron Morton do borrow liberally from Raimi's camera move playbook in order to convey the viewpoint of the spectre. But, while the visual, sonic and make-up effects are top drawer (with the deluge of blood being a real coup de cinéma), the characterisation is woefully thin and only the malevolent Levy and the eagerly fraternal Fernandez are given much to work with. Blackmore, for example, all-but disappears until she pops up firing a nail gun and carving knives, chainsaws and rifles similarly come to hand with freakish convenience just as more grand guignolic splatter is required. Thus, while newcomers to the franchise and those familiar with, but not precious about it might derive some excitement and/or amusement out of this self-consciously outré offering, casual by-passers might wonder what all the fuss is about, as this is neither frightening nor funny..

Proof that they didn't always do it better in the olden days is provided by Kevin Connor's Motel Hell (1980), which was scripted by producer siblings Robert and Steven-Charles Jaffe and can't decide whether it's a slasher with a comic streak or a lampoon with a taste for gore. Consequently, while the cast has plenty of fun and there are as many yucks and yeuchs, this struggles to improve upon the gag that the red neon `o' of the Motel Hello sign is always on the blink.

Farmer Rory Calhoun runs the establishment with the assistance of rotund sister Nancy Parsons. But he is more famed for his meaty treats than his hospitality and it is only after Everett Creach crashes his motorbike and sidecar that Calhoun's secret ingredient is revealed. In order to ensure a steady supply of human flesh, Calhoun has rigged up a series of chains to force vehicles off the road and he plants the victims (up to their necks, but minus their tongues) in a special garden, where he fattens them cattle feed until they are ready to be slaughtered and smoked.

Among those who wind up in this grizzly bone orchard are a pair of dorky co-eds, a nosy health inspector, a bondage-loving couple and a combo named Ivan and the Terribles combo, whose drummer is John Ratzenburger. But Calhoun decides to spare Creach's girlfriend, Nina Axelrod, as he decides the business needs some fresh blood. The only trouble is, his lawman brother, Paul Linke, falls in love with Axelrod and, when she announces that she prefers Calhoun, a family feud erupts that can seemingly only be solved by Calhoun donning a severed pig's head and firing up the chainsaw.

The fact that a variation on this scenario recently resurfaced in Aussies Cameron and Colin Cairnes's 100 Bloody Acres suggests that this is an enduring cult classic. Screen veteran Calhoun leads a willing cast with arch sobriety, while Joseph M. Altadonna's art direction is marvellously macabre. But, while the Jaffes put a deadpan spin on the stock cannibal storyline, this is more intriguing for its insights into the state of late 70s American horror than for the quality of its content.

A much more traditional form of agriculture comes under scrutiny in Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing (1981), as Hittite runaway Douglas Barr and pregnant wife Maren Jensen opt to purchase land adjoining the austere religious community from which he fled. Unsurprisngly, this incurs the wrath of elder Ernest Borgnine, who dislikes `outsides' as much as Michael Berrymen, who takes perverse spiritual pleasure in tormenting non-believers Lois Nettleton and her daughter, Lisa Hartman. So, when Barr is killed in a nocturnal tractor accident, Jensen seeks solace in her abjuring neighbours and, undaunted by being branded an `incubus', she rejects Borgnine's offer to buy her out and decides to till the land with old friends Sharon Stone and Susan Buckner.

Increasingly viewed with suspicion after Berryman disappears, the women are advised to leave by sheriff Kevin Cooney when his corpse is found hanging from a rope in the barn that seemed to have entrapped Stone of its own accord. But, even though she is menaced by a snake in her bath and Stone has a close encounter with a spider, they refuse to budge and purchase a shotgun for protection. Yet, while they becomes seriously afraid when brother-in-law Jeff East and Buckner are murdered while making out in her car (after he is engaged to his cousin, Colleen Riley) and Barr's corpse is exhumed, Jensen and Stone discover that they have been barking up the wrong tree in suspecting that Borgnine is their tormentor.

Although its reveal feels like something out of a Scooby-Doo adventure, this is a consistently tense thriller than ends with a wonderfully unexpected, if slightly tacky jolt. Directing his fifth feature, Craven combines well with cinematographer Robert C. Jessup and production designer Jack  Marty to create a credibly otherworldly milieu that makes the plight of the beset trio all the more perturbing. Ernest Borgnine was rather unfairly nominated for a Razzie for his performance as a die-hard fundamentalist, as the picture's central culture clash is so firmly grounded in his unswerving conviction in both his faith and his lifestyle. But the screenplay often falls back on generic cliché to generate its scares, while some of the support playing is decidedly undistinguished. However, James Horner's choral score is splendidly atmospheric and the fascination with dreams anticipates the chills to come in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

This was released the same year as Larry Stewart's The Initiation (1984), which also relies heavily on the disquieting nature of recurring dreams. This time it is student Daphne Zuniga who is being subjected to night terrors, as she imagines herself back in childhood and reacting to the spoliation of her dolls by walking in on wealthy parents Clu Gulager and Vera Miles making love and stabbing her father in the leg before he confronts a mysterious intruder who catches fire during the ensuing struggle. Graduate James Read and research assistant Joy Jones are keen to delve into Zuniga's subconscious for his parapsychology thesis. But amnesia caused by a treehouse fall has wiped all her memories before the age of nine and she is currently much more concerned with the initiation test that will determine whether she is to be admitted to the chic Delta Ro Kai sorority house.

Unbeknownst to Zuniga, a badly charred inmate (Robert Dowdell) has escaped from an asylum some 300 miles from campus after lacerating nurse Patti Heider with a garden fork. But her focus is entirely on breaking into Gulager's department store with fellow pledges Marilyn Kagan, Paula Knowles and Hunter Tylo and stealing the nightwatchman's uniform. However, even though Delta chief Frances Peterson has arranged for frat boys Trey Stroud, Peter Malof and Christopher Bradley to put the wind up the unsuspecting trio, it soon becomes clear that they are not alone inside the mall.

Old habits die hard for TV veteran Larry Stewart and his soap-specialist screenwriter Charles Pratt, Jr., as they impose their small-screen vision on a hackneyed tale that cries out for some panache and innovation. The opening dream sequence is competently handled, but Read's pursuit of Zuniga drags on and it is only when the principals find themselves locked in a store full of potential blood-letting implements that the horror kicks in. Pratt deserves credit for plumping for such a deliciously overripe climactic twist, but this is an uninspired chiller that disrobes several characters for the shoddiest of reasons and largely wastes such genre icons as Miles and Gulager.

The attention shifts to the have-nots in Brian Trenchard Smith's Dead End Drive-In (1986), a neglected slice of Ozploitation that was adapted by Peter Smalley from a short story by Peter Carey. Despite its literary origins, however, this is very much a picture rooted in the Australian New Wave, as it not only riffs on Peter Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) and George Miller's Mad Max (1979), but also on the British-born Brian Trenchard Smith's Turkey Shoot (1982), which just happens to be playing at the Star Drive-In when Ned Manning takes Natalie McCurry out on a date in older brother Ollie Hall's 1957 Chevy.

Escape is vital in a society without hope, as the collapse of the economy has led to mass unemployment and sparked a crime wave that has turned any out of the way place into a no go area. In an effort to restore order, the government has opened a chain of nine drive-ins that show violent movies and keep the patrons supplied with drink, drugs, punk rock and junk food in the hope of breaking their spirit or at least making them too indolent and dependent to cause further trouble. Despite holding down two jobs, Manning makes the mistake of claiming to be unemployed in order to claim a discount and he pays by having two tyres stolen from his rear wheels by cops charged with patrolling the compound.

He demands to see owner Peter Whitford, but he merely goes through the motions of registering a complaint and Manning is dismayed to see McCurry acclimatising to her new surroundings, while he continues to search for ways to escape. After several days, he succeeds in getting a new pair of tyres. But he now discovers he is out of petrol and damage to his engine further frustrates him. He threatens Whitford to stop sabotaging his efforts to leave, but he is soon distracted by McCurry's growing friendship with a gang of girls who have poisoned her mind against the Asians who seem to have been bussed in great numbers into the drive-in simply to serve as scapegoats. Desperate to leave, Manning steals a tow-truck. But he needs to ensure his name is erased from the system before he can make a break.

As dystopian satires go, this is remorselessly bleak. But Lawrence Eastwood's production design is exemplary and it allows Trenchard-Smith to produce a comic-book variation on Luis Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel (1962). The insights into the future of youth and the embattled ocker psyche have proved disturbingly prescient. However, the surfeit of peripheral drifters rather clogs up the storyline and the resistibly chauvinist depiction of the majority of the female characters leaves a bad taste (even though this was par for the course at the time). Moreover, Manning is himself too sketchily defined to make an entirely empathetic anti-hero and the decision to switch from the social critique arising from the conditions within the drive-in to a bog-standard flight against the odds scenario prevents an intriguing film from being a compelling one.

By curious coincide, The Exterminating Angel is also referenced in one of the entries in a fabled BBC series that has been revived by the BFI. Not to be confused with the 1945 Ealing portmanteau or the Bob Clark feature that appeared in the same year, Dead of Night (1972) was a collection of eight dark fables that was reduced to seven when it was decided that Peter Sasdy's take on Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape would stand alone. Sadly, as there was no defined archiving policy at the time, four episodes -`Bedtime', `Death Cancels All Debts', `Smith' and `Two in the Morning' - were wiped and now survive only in script form. However, the respective scenarios by Hugh Whitemore, Peter Draper, Dorothy Alison and Leo Lehman are included among the extras in this typically solid package, which preserves the first two and the final stories broadcast between 5 November and 17 December.

Written and directed by Don Taylor, `The Exorcism' got the series off to a chilling start, as Karl Marx and Luis Buñuel combine to give bourgeois couple Edward Petherbridge and Anna Cropper and their guests, Clive Swift and Sylvia Kay, a Christmas to remember. Having shown off their renovated cottage with a jovial dismissal of his father's die-hard socialism, Petherbridge consoles Cropper that she is having a mental blockage when she finds herself playing a piece on the clavichord that she has never heard before. He finds a ready ally in Swift, who proves his point about the mind playing tricks by blindfolding Kay and making her scream when he rubs an ice cube across her cheek after claiming he was going to cut her with a razor.

As they settle down to eat, the power cuts out and Petherbridge lights candles to carve the turkey. He sips some wine and declares he can taste blood in it and, while his diners aver their own drinks are fine, all feel nauseated by the food and a distressed Cropper is further disturbed by seeing the skeleton of a child in her bedroom. Swift declares they are suffering from hallucinations and suggests the open some windows. But they discover they are barricaded into the house and, when Cropper falls into a trance, they learn the harrowing reasons they have seemingly been chosen by fate.

The anecdote about the 19th-century peasants and the news bulletin from Kenneth Kendall end this discomfiting tale on a resoundingly sombre note. Production designer Judy Steele merits mention for the transformation of the bedroom, while Cropper deserves to be singled out from a fine ensemble. But, while this socialist chiller remains highly effective, it is difficult not to be distracted by comparisons with the salmon mousse incident in Monty Python's Meaning of Life (1983) and by the fact Mary Ure committed suicide following a disastrous opening night of the London stage version of The Exorcism in April 1975.

It has to be said that the other two vignettes suffer by comparison with such a tour de force. Written by Doctor Who scribe Robert Holmes and directed by Rodney Bennett, 'Return Flight' centres on airline pilot Peter Barkworth, who insists that he has recovered from the recent loss of his wife, but remains at a loss to explain why he keeps seeing an unlit plane flying across his path while at the controls. As the story develops, it emerges that his wife was previously married to a Lancaster bomber pilot who died on a heroic mission during the Second World War and that Barkworth is being tormented by an inferiority complex. Notwithstanding a nuanced performance from the typically excellent Barkworth, this lacks suspense and Paul Ciappessoni's interpretation of John Bowen's 'A Woman Sobbing' similarly struggles to grip the imagination, in spite of a solid display by Anna Massey, as a housewife and mother of two who becomes convinced that she can hear pitiful cries in the attic at night. Naturally, neither husband Ronald Hines nor German au pair Yocki Rhodes notice anything and Massey is forced to undergo an exorcism when the doctors admit they are baffled. Yet, while this is carefully staged, it lacks the melodramatic punch of either Patrick Hamilton's twice-filmed stage chestnut, Gaslight, or Bowen's own 1970 Play for Today, `Robin Redbreast', in which Anna Cropper's TV script editor falls foul of the locals when she rents an isolated cottage in Evesham to recover from a broken romance.

The standard rises considerably for Schalcken the Painter (1979), which was adapted by director Leslie Megahey from a short story by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, who took his inspiration from the life of artist Godfried Schalcken (1643-1706). Originally transmitted under the auspices of the Omnibus programme, this vanished from view after a single repeat and will be welcomed on disc by those who recall being spellbound by a film that not only captured the look of 17th-century Dutch art, but also invoked the spirit of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) through John Hooper's elegant camerawork, Anna Ridley's exquisite interiors and Bob Julian's sublime lighting.

Narrator Charles Gray confides that paintings often represent actual events and the action flashes back from a canvas of a woman seemingly in danger to Godfried Schalcken (Jeremy Clyde) studying under Gerrit Dou (Maurice Denham) in Leyden in the 1660s. He is besotted with Dou's niece, Rose (Cheryl Kennedy), but his mentor forces her to marry Vanderhausen (John Justin), a cadaverous merchant from Rotterdam who seals the bargain with a box of pure gold. Distraught, Schalcken goes in search of his beloved, only to learn from a coachman that Rose and Vanderhausen never came out of St Lawrence's church on the day of their wedding.

Taking the pouch with which Vanderhausen paid his fare, Schalcken throws himself into his work and becomes a prosperous, but passionless painter. One night, however, Rose returns home and begs Schalcken for food and a priest. He draws his sword when she screams in the darkness, but she disappears as a door slams and he doesn't see her again until he has a vision on the night of Dou's funeral in 1675, in which he is compelled to listen to Rose's mockery of his reliance on prostitutes before she disrobes to make love with the grotesque Vanderhausen.

Brooding and unnerving, this is a riveting study of the relationships between art, commerce, ambition, lust and power. It also comments acerbically on the status of women and the nature of inspiration and Megahey skillfully evokes Schalcken's own use of candles and lanterns to recreate his disturbed world. Archly narrated by the peerless Gray (who, of course, has performed similar chores on Jim Sharman's The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975) and superbly played by its principal quartet, this is a televisual masterpiece that is accompanied here by an intriguing pair of shorts: Edward Abraham's The Pit (1962) and Digby Rumsey's The Pledge (1981), which were respectively based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe and Lord Dunsany.

Sadly, we pass from the glorious to the gormless with James Hong The Vineyard (1989), in which the director stars in his own story about a mysterious scientist who lives on an island with wife Lissa Zappardino, a quartet of grey-shirted henchmen and a motley crew of zombies. He also keeps his dungeon well stocked with pretty people whose essence he needs for the wine (which also contains shavings from an amulet stolen from his mother) that keeps him from turning into a pustulated ghoul. Fortunately, Hong is in cahoots with crooked Hollywood agent Karl-Heinz Teuber, who keeps him supplied with starlets like Karen Witter, who will do whatever it takes to find fame. But Hong has not counted on the dogged efforts of Michael Wong to expose his crimes. Pocked with chasmic breaches of plot logic and all-too-ready to resort to shameless titillation between moments of camp schlock, this is a feeble companion piece to Motel Hell. Yet Hong has to be commended for a performance that is every bit as demented as his direction.

As Ian Clark reports in The Facility, more nefarious goings on are endangering a group of volunteers at the Limbrook Medical Centre where Dr Chris Larkin of ProSyntrex Pharmaceuticals is testing the new drug Pro9. Joining the optimistic Aneurin Barnard in being talked through the procedures are fellow students Skye Lourie (a flighty party girl) and Amit Shah (permanently twitchy), perky office temp Alex Reid, earnest journalist Nia Roberts, irascible doleite Steve Evets and annoying estate agent Oliver Coleman. Banned from drinking, smoking or communicating with the outside world, the septet discuss how they are going to spend the £2000 they will receive for spending two weeks in cushy isolation. But, from the moment Coleman and Shah develop dangerous side effects from the first dosage administered by nurse Emily Butterfield, the trial becomes a battle for survival.

Having made a minor impact on the festival circuit as Guinea Pigs, this low-budget variation on David Cronenberg's Shivers (1975) benefits from Max Berman's claustrophobic interiors, Stuart Bentley's nimble camerawork and Paul Hyett's convincing make-up. But, while the cast works hard to convey suitable amounts of dread, the characterisation remains paper thin and Clark struggles to sustain the suspense, in spite of the relentless eeriness of Jake Robert's sound effects. Nevertheless, Clark (who has forged a decent reputation with his short films), does enough here to suggest he could do good things with a better script.

By contrast, having earned their generic stripes with The Zombie Diaries (2006) and World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries (2011), Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates miss their step with The Paranormal Diaries: Clophill. Starting out as a documentary inquiry into the spooky occurrences that are supposed to have taken place in the vicinity of the ruined 14th-century church of St Mary's in the Bedfordshire village of Clophill, this completely loses its way following the imposition of a fictional contrivance around the hour mark. Up to this point, there is much to ponder in the contributions gleaned by Gates, Bartlett, Craig Stovin and Criselda Cabitac from the various psychic investigators and avowed eyewitnesses to the desecrations and acts of necromancy that have purportedly been performed in the 50 years since a black mass was seemingly said amidst the tombs in March 1963. But, while Pete Renton's score and sound mix are as accomplished as George Carpenter's contrasts between the sunny summer imagery and the disconcerting nocturnal shots, the resort to the found footage gambit is deeply disappointing and this winds up being as credible as Stephen Volk's BBC hoax, Ghostwatch (1992).

Adam Lamas does marginally better in Empty Rooms (2010), a crowdfunded haunted house chiller that was filmed in 15 days for around £10,000. It centres on Ramlah Fredaini, who is trying to make a fresh start after splitting from her husband and is helped move into a new home by hippy sister Tegan Ashton Cohan. Soon after she leaves, however, Fredaini is attacked in the shower and she naturally blames mute autistic son Charlie Koudsi, who has been unsettled by recent events. But, she notices a striking image of a naked man among his drawings and arranges for him to see a doctor. Reassured that Koudsi will settle down, Fredaini returns home. However, an intruder that night bears a spooky resemblance to her son's picture and their lives become prone to increasingly dangerous happenstances.

Often ominous, but rarely scary, this is a methodically constructed picture that is capably played and atmospherically photographed by Jay Lee. Lamas also edits precisely and makes the most of Brian Hawlk's sound design and Meredith Yayanos's score. So, if the story meanders and the resolution is more than a little mundane, the 1970s feel and the non-patronising depiction of an imperilled woman and a differently abled child set this apart from much indie horror.

Unfortunately, Greg Olliver can't quite repeat the trick with Devoured, which flashes back from the opening shot of his Latin American heroine's corpse being discovered on the floor of the New York restaurant where she has been slaving for minimum wage in order to pay for son Luis Harris's much-needed operation. Initially, it appears as though this is going to be a social realist saga revealing how single mother Marta Milans was picked on by boss Kara Jackson and her chef lover Tyler Hollinger, and how she even occasionally prostituted herself in order to make some extra cash. But, as she takes solace in her nightly phone calls home, it slowly becomes clear that Malins is in the middle of a breakdown that sees her holding conversations after hours with shadowy figures that she sees clearly but which fails to register on the CCTV. Furthermore, she is visited as she sleeps by a spectral child who strokes her hair and not even the kindness of fireman neighbour Bruno Gunn can save her from her fate.

Focusing as much on the invisible isolation of the migrant worker as on Malins's psychological state, Marc Landau's screenplay exposes the casual racism of inner-city life and the growing gap between the rich and the poor in Western society. However, it sometimes struggles with the supernatural elements and the denouement is slightly underwhelming. Moreover, while Malins excels as the devoted mother slowly losing control, some of the support playing is a little more stereotypical and Olliver's direction is never quite as deft as Carly Paradis's piano score and Lyle Vincent's discreet cinematography. Nevertheless, this is an interesting departure from Olliver's 2010 documentary, Lemmy.

Rob Zombie also opts for a slow-burning approach for the first two thirds of The Lords of Salem, which also features a hallucinating heroine. This time, it is Boston radio DJ and recovering junkie Sheri Moon Zombie who keeps thinking she can see someone moving around in an empty apartment owned by landlady Judy Geeson. But even weirder things start happening when she plays an old record by a band named The Lords and its mix of eccentric sounds and creepy incantations has a deleterious effect on Moon Zombie, her audience and fellow broadcasters Jeff Daniel Phillips and Ken Foree. A prologue has already clued us that the music relates back to 17th-century Salem, where Meg Foster was burned as a witch by zealous reverend Andrew Prine. But Moon Zombine needs to consult local historian Bruce Davison, make the acquaintance of Geeson's sinister sisters Patricia Quinn and Dee Wallace and discover that The Lords are going to play a one-off gig before she can be swept back to the 1690s to discover the curse she carries and the fact that rock`n'roll really is the devil's own music.

Once again collaborating with his wife, Zombie builds steadily towards a closing third that defies logic and beggars description. Strewn amongst the demonic dwarves, onanistic clerics, rampant goats, hysterical (and naturally naked) witches are knowing references to directors as diverse as Georges Méliès, Kenneth Anger, Mario Bava, Sergei Parajanov, Stanley Kubrick, Michael Reeves, Ken Russell Roman Polanski, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Dario Argento, Andrzej Zulawski and David Lynch. But, for all its stylistic audacity and technical surety, this audiovisual assault will infuriate as many as it fascinates, as not only is it frequently misogynist, but it also makes little or no sense and reeks of self-indulgence. Moreover, Zombie peppers the soundtrack with a surfeit of obvious oldies to complement a John 5 score that, like Brandon Trost's photography, Jennifer Spence's production design and Leah Butler's costumes, probably deserves a better fate.

While this proves conclusively that the odd flash of brilliance cannot save a fundamentally flawed move, Jason Trost (who is the brother of Zombie's cinematographer) demonstrates with All Superheroes Must Die (2011) that a good idea is doomed if the script fails to deliver on the premise. It doesn't matter that Trost only had a $20,000 budget at his disposal for a two-week shoot. He is let down by his inability to think within the box and his decision to produce an action thriller that often feels like a badly designed video game ruinously wastes what could have been a thoughtful insight into the mindset of a superhero and the impact that losing his powers and his ability to protect and serve might have on his psyche and ego.

Abducted and rendered helpless by arch-nemesis Rickshaw (James Remar), Charge (Jason Trost), Cutthroat (Lucas Till), Shadow (Sophie Merkley) and The Wall (Lee Valmassy) wake in an abandoned town and are tasked to use their physical and mental agility to save its few remaining inhabitants from a series of situations that will result in the victims (who have all been fitted with bomb vests) detonating if the event of failure. Despondent at their powerlessness, the foursome start to turn on each other. But the screenplay runs out of ideas long before its lacklustre conclusion and it's only Remar's cackling villainy that keeps this missed opportunity from imploding. Trost's ambition cannot be faulted. It's just a shame that he drew more inspiration from such an overrated dollop of torture porn as James Wan's Saw (2005) than more cannily subversive flicks like James Gunn's Super and Matthew Vaughan's Kick-Ass (both 2010).

Veteran concept and storyboard artist Richard Raaphorst's similarly shows what happens when a peach of a pitch refuses to flourish in his directorial bow, Frankenstein's Army. Combining standby tropes from the horror and war genres, screenwriters Chris Mitchell and Miguel Tejada-Flores centre their story on Alexander Mercury, a Red Army soldier who has been ordered to produce a 16mm propaganda film as his unit makes its triumphant way through a crumbling Nazi Germany. However, it's not the Wehrmacht that martinet sergeant Robert Gwilym, feckless Luke Newberry, short-fused rebel Andrei Zayats and fugitive Polish Jew Joshua Sasse encounter as they stumble across an old mining town and discover a rabble of zombot killing machines with names like Mosquito, Propellerhead and Overlocker who have been stitched together from corpses by mad scientist Karel Roden.

The latter revels in the role of Viktor Frankenstein's grandson and Raaphorst and effects maestro Rogier Samuels are to be applauded for eschewing computer-generated trickery (although cinematographer Bart Beekman's imagery was digitally manipulated to give it a suitably antiquated look). Production designer Jindrich Koci also deserves plaudits, but this does little that has not been done before in Tommy Wirkola's Dead Snow (2009) or Steve Barker's Outpost: Black Sun (2012) and, while it is often uproarious (in the main, unintentionally so), it also becomes a tad repetitive and never quite explains how such slow-moving creatures can do so much damage to well-armed troops. 

Finally, there's a spooky treat for the kids that is guaranteed not to give them nightmares in the form of Chad Van De Keere's animation, Dear Dracula. Young Sam (Nathan Gamble) lives with his grandmother (Marion Ross) and loves all things horror. His best friend is a spider named Webby and he is so excited at seeing an advert for a new Dracula action figure that he decides to write to the Count (Ray Liotta) to see if he can help get it for him for Halloween rather than having to wait until Christmas. Feeling forgotten in Transylvania, Dracula jumps at the chance to meet a fan and flies to America with his loyal servant, Mirroe (Emilio Estevez), in the hope that a change of scenery will enable him to start scaring people again. But, while Sam reassures his guest that he will go down as storm at the neighbourhood Halloween party, he also needs something of a confidence boost in order to talk to Emma (Ariel Winter), who lives across the road.

Despite lacking the technical slickness of Genndy Tartakovsky's Hotel Transylvania, this still contains a few pertinent asides on the state of screen horror and genre savvy parents will doubtlessly smile at the gentle swipes at extreme violence and revisionist franchises like the Twilight saga while their kids enjoy watching Dracula rise from his coffin and turn into a bat. Ray Liotta and Emilio Estevez contribute amusing voiceovers and those charmed by this brisk featurette should note that they reunite with Ariel Winter in Van De Keere's A Monster Christmas, which is released on disc later this year.