By James Whittington, 25th February 2023
THE VINTAGE VAULT continues to haunt Sunday nights with its popular classic genre double-bills, headed up this month by the Channel premiere of Sidney Hayers' notorious British cult classic, CIRCUS OF HORRORS.
Here's what the VINTAGE VAULT has lined-up for March:
March the 5th brings sci-fi shudders to your screens starting with THE MONOLITH MONSTERS. A meteor crashes in the desert, leaving behind huge black chunks. While being analysed in a science lab, the crystalline stones are accidentally drenched with water and begin to grow to gargantuan dimensions. A sudden rainstorm further exacerbates the situation, causing the monoliths to grow to hitherto unimagined heights. Can the world be saved by the saline solution which the scientists are hurriedly developing in the lab? This is followed by an invisible enemy in FIEND WITHOUT A FACE. A scientist's thoughts materialize as an army of invisible brain-shaped monsters (complete with spinal-cord tails!) who terrorize an American military base in this nightmarish chiller. This independently made British black-and-white cult classic was directed by Arthur Crabtree and stars Marshall Thompson, Kynaston Reeves, Michael Balfour, and Kim Parker.
The following Sunday will have you grabbing your crucifix as Hammer's DRACULA is first on. On a search for his missing friend, Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen), vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is led to Count Dracula's (Christopher Lee) castle, where he finds an undead Harker in Dracula's crypt and discovers that the count's next target is Harker's ailing fiancee, Lucy Holmwood (Carol Marsh). With the help of her brother, Arthur (Michael Gough), Van Helsing is determined to protect Lucy and put an end to Count Dracula's parasitic reign of terror. We follow this with a drive-in classic, THE BLOB. Two teenagers, Steve (Steven McQueen) and his best girl, Jane (Aneta Corseaut), notice a shooting star fall to earth, destroying an elderly man and growing to a terrifying size. The blob continues to grow, killing many, until the teenagers, with the aid, of policeman Dave (Earl Rowe) discover a way to stop it.
More classic chills from Hammer on the 19th, this time we have the horror all wrapped-up in THE MUMMY. In 1895 Egypt, a team of British archaeologists led by John Banning, opens the tomb of Princess Ananka, despite warnings of a death curse which will fall upon any desecrators. Three years later in England, a vengeful Egyptian man arrives and unleashes the living mummy Kharis on the men. This superior Hammer Films production reunites the director, Terence Fisher, with stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. After this you get a chance to meet the FIRST MAN INTO SPACE. Brash U.S. Navy test pilot, Lieutenant Dan Prescott, hungry for fame, rockets himself beyond Earth's atmosphere on test flight Y-13, only to become encrusted with cosmic dust and return to earth as a blood-drinking monster. Directed by Robert Day, it stars Marshall Thompson, Marla Landi, Bill Edwards, and Robert Ayres.
The Channel Premiere of CIRCUS OF HORRORS kicks of our final VINTAGE VAULT for March. A deranged plastic surgeon (Anton Diffring) takes over a traveling circus, then transforms horribly disfigured young women into ravishing beauties and coerces them to perform in his three-ring extravaganza. But when the re-sculpted lovelies try to escape, they begin to meet with sudden and horrific accidents. "The Grisliest Show on Earth" is about to begin. Donald Pleasence and Yvonne Monlaur co-star in this notorious 1960 British cult classic from director Sidney Hayers. Our final movie for the month is a true classic, 13 GHOSTS. When occultist Dr Plato Zorba leaves a huge ramshackle house to his nephew Cyrus and his impoverished family, they are shocked to find the house is haunted. Their new residence comes complete with Doctor Zorba's housekeeper, Elaine Zacharides, plus a fortune in buried treasure and twelve horrifying ghosts. However, there is someone in the house who is also looking for the money and is willing to kill for it...This infectious supernatural horror is directed by William Castle and stars Charles Herbert, Jo Morrow, Rosemary DeCamp, Martin Milner and Donald Woods.
Related show tags: 13 GHOSTS, CIRCUS OF HORRORS, DRACULA, FIEND WITHOUT A FACE, FIRST MAN INTO SPACE, THE BLOB, THE MONOLITH MONSTERS, THE MUMMY MORE FEATURES Crime and sci-fi adventures headline May 2024 premieres on LEGEND
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