Author Archive: Mark R. Hasan

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BR: Hound of the Baskervilles, The (1959)

BR: Hound of the Baskervilles, The (1959)

August 19, 2016 | By

As noted by film historians David Del Valle and Steven Peros in the first of two commentary tracks that adorn this near-perfect Twilight Time Blu-ray release, Hammer Films’ evolution to a horror icon was gradual, shifting into full gear during the sixties and seventies, but during the 1950s and early 1960s the British studio was still putting out suspense films, crime dramas, and in the case of The Hound of the Baskervilles, the first of a franchise that never materialized…

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DVD: Cash On Demand (1961)

DVD: Cash On Demand (1961)

August 19, 2016 | By

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Britain’s Hammer Films produced blazing colour horror movies based on classic Universal monsters – vampires, mummies, werewolves – and chilling occult thrillers, but amid these sexier productions were suspense-dramas grounded in reality…

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DVD: Devil-Ship Pirates, The (1964)

DVD: Devil-Ship Pirates, The (1964)

August 19, 2016 | By

Never one to allowing a genre to go unsaturated, Hammer Films wrangled producer-writer Jimmy Sangster to concoct a pirate tale for star Christopher Lee, with the end results feeling an awful lot like a variation on the writer’s prior swashbuckling credit…

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DVD: Pirates of Blood River, The (1962)

DVD: Pirates of Blood River, The (1962)

August 19, 2016 | By

Although best known as the prime purveyors of Britain’s gothic and classic monster films, Hammer Film also indulged in a few unrelated genres – crime, suspense, and pirate (!)…

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A Passionate What? – Two Naughties from the Seventies

A Passionate What? – Two Naughties from the Seventies

August 9, 2016 | By

Move update + reviews of two early seventies oddities: Roman Polanski’s sex comedy What? / Che? (Severin) and Gianluigi Calderone’s Appassionata (Twilight Time) on Blu.

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