Category: Delirium News & Updates

1977 psycho thriller packs a cheap, shocking punch

Director Irvin Berwick (MALIBU HIGH) may not have made many movies in his day, but – as we all know – quality trumps quantity and his 1977 exploitation psychodrama shocker HITCH HIKE TO HELL is not only his best work, it’s one of the weirdest and most potent pictures of its kind, and that’s saying something considering the company the movie kept during that most sensational era of “passion pit” drive-in potboilers. And really, “quality” is a subjective term. By conventional standards, the shoestring-budgeted HITCH HIKE TO HELL isn’t a particularly well produced work. But man, does it pack a disorienting, primal punch.

The film tells the tawdry tale of Howard (Robert Gribbin), a dry-cleaning delivery driver who is seemingly happy, upbeat and well-liked by all. Certainly the wayward women hitchhikers he picks up dig his company. He’s kind and a good listener. But the problem is, when said runaway ladies start taking trash about their domestic lives – specifically griping about their mothers – Howard starts to get dark. Then, he gets darker. Within minutes, Jekyll become Hyde and Howard drives his poor passengers to a remote locale, yanks them screaming out of his van and beats and savagely rapes them before brutally murdering them. And then it repeats.

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Deeply weird Canadian kid-flick is the first release from Severin Kids

Kids growing up in Canada in the 1980s who were blessed with access to PayTV will recall – fondly or otherwise – director Michael Rubbo’s bizarre and oh-so-French-Canadian eyesore THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION. The movie – part of producer Rock Demers’ perpetually odd “Tales for All” cinema series – seemed to ALWAYS be on channels like First Choice and Superchannel (and then, when the two stations merged, First Choice/Superchannel) and, with its low production values, weird dubbing and terminally insane plot mechanics, THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION became the kind of curio that kids watched when there was nothing else to watch.

Which is not to say THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION is bad. It’s neither good, nor bad. It just is! There’s never been a movie like it before or since, and apparently – according to Severin Films’ copy on their new Blu-ray release – it terrified younger tots who stumbled upon it. I don’t quite get the fear factor, but there is most assuredly an arch, other-worldliness to the picture and a streak of sadism and surrealism that gave and still gives the picture a unique fingerprint.

Continue reading “Blu-ray Review: THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION”

Comprehensive coffee table book charts the entire HALLOWEEN franchise

DELIRIUM has a pair of copies of authors Dustin McNeill and Travis Mullins’ massive new book TAKING SHAPE, a definitive glimpse at the making of every single picture (to date) in the HALLOWEEN feature film universe. Loaded with exclusive interviews, tons of rare photos and even a peek at the legendary novelizations of the films!

To grab a copy, email chris@fullmoonfeatures.com with the words TAKING SHAPE in the subject line. Two winners will be selected at random.

Arrow Video re-releases the 1957 Lon Chaney biopic

Generally speaking, contemporary horror fans tend to associate the name Lon Chaney with the legacy of his son, Lon Chaney Jr, the man who was – and will forever be – Universal’s THE WOLF MAN. But of course, the more seasoned cinephile knows the elder Chaney was one of the founding fathers of special effects and fantasy-film performance art during motion pictures’ pioneering silent birth. He was known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces” and he was indeed just that, a virtuoso creator who literally did it all and perfected the craft of making the most hideous of visages sympathetic, likable and sometimes, even lovable.

In the late 1950s, perhaps due to the birth of television and the renewed interest in monsters, Chaney’s legacy enjoyed a resurgence, with late night horror shows screening Chaney classics like THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and THE MAN WHO LAUGHED and magazines like Famous Monsters offering beautifully painted covers of the master’s various guises. Enter Joseph Pevney’s Cheney biopic MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES starring the legendary Jimmy Cagney and co-written by R. Wright Campbell (writer of a handful of classic Roger Corman westerns). The 1957 Universal production was initially criticized for its altering of key facts in Chaney’s life and for the casting of Cagney, who was by this time a bit long-in-the-tooth to play the actor during his youth. But no matter. Time has proven this fine film to be the classic it is and now, thanks to Arrow Video’s licensing of the title for Blu-ray, we can reappraise the picture.

Continue reading “Blu-ray Review: MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES”

Gothic and gory horror comic is a prequel to the upcoming Full Moon feature film

The second DEADLY TEN feature film, Chris Alexander’s NECROPOLIS: LEGION, is set to premiere on Full Moon’s AMAZON PRIME channel on 12/2, with an early sneak peek premiere of the picture appearing on the Full Moon Features channel and app (subscribe today on most digital platforms or via www.FullMoonFeatures.com) THIS (Black) FRIDAY on 11/29!

DELIRIUM wants to give YOU a copy of the acclaimed new DEADLY TEN presents NECROPOLIS: LEGION comic book from Full Moom Comix, a prequel to the film co-penned by screenwriter Brockton McKinney!

Continue reading “CONTEST! Win a Copy of the NECROPOLIS: LEGION Comic Book!”

Guest editor Ama Lea takes you behind the scenes of the making of our latest issue!

Severin unearths the original European release of this savage little drive-in classic

A grubby, public domain eyesore for years, Paolo Heusch’s WEREWOLF IN A GIRLS’ DORMITORY has always held a certain fascination among Eurohorror fans. Even in its awkward US edit, complete with that awesomely tacky title and goofball garage-rock theme song “The Ghoul in School”, this German/Italian co-production is an eerie anomaly, a hybrid mad science-meets-Gothic horror melodrama filled with mood, atmosphere and bursts of savage violence.

Now, Severin Films have tracked down a print of the original Italian release titled LYCANTHROPUS (great name for a band!), given it a 2K scan and presented it here on Blu-ray, totally uncut and in both Italian and the pretty decent English dub. The result is a revelation, a stylish, shadowy, monochromatic mystery with the screen’s weirdest werewolf and a lush, spooky score by composer Armando Trovajoli, which the company has awesomely delivered on an accompanying CD.

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