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Showing posts from 2014

Radio Free Albemuth (2010)

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Nicholas Brady (Jonathan Scarfe) is a record store clerk living in Berkeley, California with his wife Rachel (Katheryn Winnick) and has a friend named Phil (Shea Wigham) who is a science fiction writer.  It is 1985, but the world is not the same as the one we are familiar with.  Mark Chapman shot Mick Jagger instead of John Lennon, all three Kennedy brothers were killed and President Fremont (Scott Wilson) has been in power since 1970.  Running on a strong anti-communist platform he has supposedly maintained his popularity and the Cold War has ended at this point.  Russia is now an ally.  However, Fremont continually uses his emergency powers to slowly take away the freedom of U.S. citizens under the guise of fighting a terrorist organization called Aramchek which is supposedly made of hard-line Soviet government officials who refuse to give up. It is at this time that Brady starts receiving visions from Valis, telling him to move to Los Angeles and begin a new life.  Rachel, howev

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

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Prior to the events in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , Thorin (Richard Armitage) is researching rumors that his father Thrain (Michael Mizrahi) may still be alive, although everyone believes he was killed by Azog the Defiler (Manu Bennett) during the Battle of Moriah.  While in Bree Thorin enters the Prancing Pony, followed closely by two obvious assassins who back off only after the arrival of Gandalf (Ian McKellan), who convinces Thorin to give up the search for Thrain and instead reclaim his ancestral home in Mount Erebor, triggering the events from the first film. Back to the present, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), Gandalf and the Dwarves are fleeing Azog after their narrow escape.  Looking for refuge, Gandalf leads them to the dwelling of the shapeshifting Beorn (Mikael Persbrandt), who appears in the form of a giant bear.  Despite Beorn's disgust at Dwarves he has an even stronger hatred for Orcs, as they are responsible for the annihilation of his people. He provide

The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)

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Dr. Henry Jekyll (Paul Massie) is a scientist attempting to understand the animal nature of man.  He is obsessive in his research to the point that he completely ignores his wife Kitty (Dawn Addams), but that doesn't matter to her as she has fallen in love with his gambling addicted and philandering friend Paul Allen (Christopher Lee).  Jekyll, of course, knows nothing of this. However, once he uses his serum on himself and turns into Edward Hyde, he finds out what his wife has been up to.  He befriends Paul and attempts to win Kitty for himself, as well as court dancer and prostitute Maria (Norma Maria).  Hyde, as usual, has no moral base and is more than willing to kill and scheme for whatever he wants.  Dr. Jekyll tries to suppress him, but Hyde becomes the dominant personality, to the point that Jekyll fades into little more than a memory - one that can conveniently be blamed for Hyde's crimes. This Hammer version of the Robert Louis Stephenson novella is rather well

Orca (1977)

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Captain Nolan (Richard Harris) becomes interested in capturing an orca after he sees one attack a great white shark he was hunting.  He plans on selling it to an aquarium.  Marine biologist Rachel Bedford (Charlotte Rampling) tries to discourage him, but he goes ahead anyway and botches everything.  Not only does he fail to get the male orca he was aiming at (nicking its tail in the process), but it manages to kill both its mate and the baby she is carrying.  The orca kills one of his crew in revenge and marks him for death. Not believing that a whale (well, dolphin really) is intelligent enough to plot revenge, he refuses to believe the signs even after boats in the Newfoundland harbor in which he is docked are attacked.  Al Swain (Scott Walker), the head of the local fisherman's union, is a bit more upset because of the losses and the interference with fishing.  Also, Umilak (Will Sampson), a Native American whose tribe is from the area, says that this has happened in the pas

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)

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A year after Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) is killed by freezing him in the rivers of the mountain where he keeps his castle, the people of the surrounding town still feel his presence.  In fact, they will not even attend the local church because the shadow of the castle falls upon it.  Monsignor Ernest Mueller (Rupert Davies) intends to do something about this and forces the local priest (Ewan Hooper) to guide him to the castle so he can perform the rite of exorcism. The Monsignor succeeds, but the priest takes a drunken fall and the ice in which Dracula is encased shatters.  The priest's blood falls into the Count's mouth and... well, you can pretty much guess from the title.  Dracula quickly makes a Renfield out of the priest, but is not too happy about the cross on his doorstep and decides to take revenge against the Monsignor. Thinking that evil has finally been banished from the town the Monsignor returns to his own house with his sister Anna (Marion Mathie) and h

Autopsy (2008)

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A group of college dropouts traveling across the United States get a bit too spirited on Mardi Gras and end up crashing their car on a deserted highway in Louisiana.  To make matters worse it appears that they ran over an escaped patient.  Their phones don't work, but seemingly rescue comes in the guise of two paramedics that arrive to retrieve the patient who they say escaped before surgery, and they suggest that all the kids come along. Once they arrive, Bobby (Ross Kohn) finds a shard of glass in his side, pulls it out and begins to faint.  Fearing that he might have punctured a lung he is taken into surgery immediately, but his girlfriend Emily (Jessica Lowndes) begins to get suspicious when nurse (Jenette Goldstein) tries to prevent her from seeing him.  To make matters worse her friends begin to vanish after going in for examination. She has a reason to be concerned, as Dmitriy (Arkadiy Golubovich), a man they met in New Orleans and who quickly fell for Clare (Ashley Sc

The Unborn (1991)

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Virginia and Brad Marshall (Brooke Adams, Jeff Hayenga) are a young couple that have had no luck having children.  In fact, after several miscarriages, Virginia has been told that she can never have children.  However, on the recommendation of one of Brad's coworkers, the couple give it one last go at a fertility clinic run by Dr. Richard Meyerling (James Karen), who promises that they will have a baby. At first it looks as if the promise will be fulfilled.  However, strange things begin to happen.  Their friends' two-year-old murders her brother and another woman from the clinic, Beth (Jane Cameron), begins to believe that the baby she is carrying isn't hers.  After some research it is found that Meyerling is working on the human genome project and is using the women at his clinic to experiment on - a fact that comes to light when a test on Beth's baby comes back with the wrong number of chromosomes. Every time that Virginia learns a little bit of the truth the b

Jack's Back (1988)

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Los Angeles is gripped by a series of murders that imitate those of Jack the Ripper, with each one meticulously copied and 100 years to the date.  As the police try to catch the killer before the last murder is duplicated, John Wesford (James Spader) has his own problems.  He is a medical student working in a free clinic in Echo Park, and his boss Sidney (Rod Loomis) doesn't like the fact that he spends quite a bit of time helping the homeless.  Idealistic, he grew up in the neighborhood and cares what happens to the patients. One of the patients he recognizes: a pregnant prostitute named Denise who comes to the clinic for an abortion, which is denied by Sidney.  Recognizing her as the girl he went to prom with, he decides to go see her.  When he arrives, however, he sees his coworker Jack (Rex Ryon) also arriving at Denise's apartment.  John enters and finds her throat slashed and her body mutilated.  Jack denies having anything to do with it, claiming he only arrived to g

Female Vampire (1973)

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Countess Irina Karlstein (Lina Romay) is the last of her line.  A mute vampire, she has returned to the island of Madeira where her ancestral castle stands and, with her, has also returned her unique way of feeding: young men and women are found with bite marks on their genitals and to have died in the midst of orgasm, with men having the semen as well as the blood sucked from their bodies. Anna (Anna Watican), a journalist, interviews Irina and soon becomes one of her victims.  Noticing a pattern, Dr. Roberts (JesĂºs Franco) tries to convince the authorities they have a vampire on their hands, but is rejected.  Dr. Orloff (Jean-Pierre Bouyxou), an adept of the occult, is more willing to listen, but believes that instead of being wiped out the Countess should be left alone. Meanwhile, the Countess claims more victims, seeking to find a bit of the pleasure that her victims feel and ultimately failing.  Throughout she has been pursued by Baron Von Rathony (Jack Taylor), who believes

The Manitou (1978)

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Karen Tandy (Susan Strasberg) goes to the hospital worried about a tumor that has suddenly appeared on her back and grown to tremendous size within just a few days.  After taking X-rays, Dr. Hughes (Jon Cedar) decides to operate, both because of the increase in size and because it looks like a fetus is growing on her neck. Karen contacts her sometime boyfriend, a fortune teller named Harry Erskine (Tony Curtis), with her concerns as well.  When she stays over at his apartment the day before her surgery she starts repeating words in an unknown language.  From there, things go awry: Dr. Hughes finds himself to slice his own wrist with the scalpel during surgery, and an elderly client of Erskine's starts repeating the same words before levitating and throwing herself down the stairs. Erskine contacts a former associate named Amelia (Stella Stevens) and they hold a seance in Karen's apartment.  This leads to the discovery that what they are dealing with is a very angry Native

Voices (2007)

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Kim Ga-in (Jin-seo Yoon) is a popular high school student and a member of the fencing team.  Her parents are successful, she has a boyfriend (Ki-woo Lee) who appears to be on an upward career path and everything seems to be going her way.  Only, per parents are worried.  They see a number of murders happening on television, all for fairly minor events, and are afraid that their family may be under some curse which will make them next. As if to underscore this, Ga-in's aunt takes a tumble off a second-story balcony on her wedding day.  She survives, only to be killed by her own sister in the hospital.  Afterward, several people, from an intelligent but put-upon fellow student to a teacher to her own mother, try to kill Ga-in for unknown reasons. The only person who seems to know what is going on Sung-min (Gi-woong Park), a new boy at school that it is rumored murdered his father.  He tells Ga-in not to trust anyone, not even herself.  When she goes looking for reasons why the

Sorority House Massacre (1986)

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Beth (Angela O'Neill) returns to school after her aunt dies and her friends at a sorority house take her in over the Memorial Day weekend, hoping that she'll pledge once she gets a taste of Sorority life.  Almost everyone is gone, leaving Sara (Pamela Ross), Linda (Wendy Martel) and Tracy (Nicole Rio) to keep her company and plan for the upcoming Pow-Wow.  Of course their boyfriends are in tow as well. As soon as Beth enters the house she begins to see visions and have bad dreams.  In them a man calls her "Laura" and is chasing her with a knife, trying to murder her.  It just so happens that her entering the house has also triggered Bobby Henkel (John C. Russell), a violent mental patient, to escape from his facility and return to the house.  It turns out that what is now the sorority house was where Bobby murdered his entire family - leaving only one person alive.  It seems he has returned to finish the job. In some ways this is a mash-up of more well-known hor

Zombie High (1987)

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Andrea (Virginia Madsen) receives a scholarship to go to the prestigious Ettinger Academy, an expensive boarding school that has produced a number of the country's most successful people.  Previously only for boys, the school has recently decided to become co-ed, and Andrea is one of a number of other girls that are attending for the first time. Her boyfriend Barry (James Wilder) has misgivings, especially after he sees a mutual attraction develop between Andrea and Dr. Philo (Richard Cox) immediately on moving day.  After doing some research he finds that the academy's founder, Colonel Ettinger, was removed from his post for capturing and scalping Indians in the 19th century. Unperturbed, Andrea continues her studies, even after she and her roommate Suzi (Sherilyn Fenn) notice that the other girl they are rooming with, Mary Beth (Clare Carey), has suddenly gone from being a boy-crazy southern debutante to a full-fledged preppy.  What really gets her suspicious, however,

Haunter (2013)

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Lisa (Abigail Breslin) wakes up one morning realizing that she has been reliving the same day over and over.  Ostensibly, it's the day before her birthday in 1985.  Her brother Robbie (Peter DaCunha) has lost his glasses and is playing Pac-Man repeatedly on the Atari, mom Carol (Michelle Nolden) is worried about missing clothes and her father Bruce (Peter Outerbridge) is constantly trying to fix the car. What Lisa has suddenly realized is that she, and her whole family, are dead.  She doesn't know for how long or what happened, but she has realized that they died at some point and are unable to leave the house.  Soon, she starts to realize that there are other people in the house, which frightens her because she does not know if they are other ghosts or if the living is trying to contact her. It does turn out that there is a living family in the house, but also the former owner of the house (Stephen McHattie) does not want her to contact them.  She succeeds, however, in c

Big Ass Spider! (2013)

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Alex (Greg Grunberg) is an exterminator who, after catching a rodent in a woman's house, ends up bit by a brown recluse spider.  This results in a visit to the hospital.  While he is there a corpse comes in that contains something worse than a brown recluse: a spider accidentally created from eating fruit crossed with alien genes. After the coroner is bitten Alex agrees to hunt down the spider to cover the costs of his emergency room visit.  With the help of security guard Jose (Lombardo Boyar) he tracks it down but, while he was hunting the spider, the military, under the command of Major Braxton Tanner (Ray Wise), has shown up to try and contain it.  He corners it in the hospital basement, but it also corners him and gets away when Lieutenant Karly Brant (Clare Kramer) takes a shot at it. The spider escapes and begins feeding and growing to the point where all attempts to kill it fail.  Not only has it achieved the size of a large truck, but it has also decided that the U.S

Odd Thomas (2013)

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Odd Thomas (Anton Yelchin) is a young man living in the town of Pico Mundo, California.  He has a girlfriend named Stormy (Addison Timlin) and, due to his ability to see dead people and sometimes predict when bad things will happen, has a great relationship with the town's chief of police (Willem Dafoe). He also occasionally see creatures called bodachs, which show up when people are going to die violently.  They also have the tendency to kill those who they find out can see them, so when a bunch of them turn up following a guy he and stormy nickname Fungus Bob (Shuler Hensley) he starts to get worried.  Combined with a number of dreams that he and others are having he begins to piece together that the someone is planning a massacre - and only he, with Stormy's help, can stop it. I am not going to get any further into the plot than that as there is quite a bit to this movie that is worth seeing rather than describing.  From what I read this was adapted from a novel (also

Blackenstein (1973)

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Dr. Winifred Walker (Ivory Stone) arrives in Los Angeles to be near her fiance Eddie (Joe De Sue) who has returned from Vietnam sans arms and legs.  She goes to her old professor Dr. Stein (John Hart), who is doing experiments in reattaching limbs.  After visiting Eddie the doctor agrees to help and moves him into his clinic in the darkest, stormiest part of L.A. Using a combination of electricity and serum made from Eddie's DNA the initial results are a success.  However, Dr. Stein's assistant Malcolm (Roosevelt Jackson) has fallen in love with Winifred.  When his advances are spurned he switches the DNA serum with an RNA serum that has been known to cause regressive, animalistic behavior in other patients. At first Eddie begins to develop a thick brow line.  His speech is then affected and he grows to a large size, begins to escape the facility and go on a killing spree around the neighborhood.  Winifred realizes the the monster is Eddie after he interrupts a rape attem

Zombie Lake (1981)

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After one woman disappears and another is found dead in a small French town the mayor (Howard Vernon) and population begin to suspect that those responsible may be zombies rising from the local "Lake of the Damned".  The lake itself has a reputation stretching back to medieval times, but at this point it appears the recent bodies of a group of German soldiers that were killed by resistance fighters and thrown in to avoid repercussions of more retreating German troops. A reporter named Katia (Marcia Sharif) arrives to get the story, and the mayor tells her the rest.  It turns out one of the soldiers had saved a local woman when she got caught outside during a bombardment and was wounded.  During the occupation of the town they fell in love and had a daughter, Helena (Anouchka).  The mother died in childbirth, and her father was killed in the resistance ambush. After a team of basketball players is killed the local police finally agree to send investigators to the town. 

Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

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Chris (Jesse McCartney) is traveling around Europe with his girlfriend Natalie (Olivia Taylor Dudley) and her friend Amanda (Devin Kelley).  They make their way to Kiev to visit Chris's brother Paul (Jonathan Sadowski), and expatriate who is going to accompany them to Moscow.  After a night on the town, Paul pitches an idea for a detour: he has found an extreme tourism guide named Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko) who will take them to the abandoned town of Pripyat near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. At first Chris is reluctant, but he is overruled, and the tour commences with tour others, Australian tourist Michael (Nathan Phillips) and his girlfriend Zoe (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal).  At first it appears that their tour will be cut short when the soldiers at the main checkpoint refuse to allow them through, citing "maintenance" work.  Uri, however, knows another way in, and they spend the day photographing before Uri's insistence that they leave before dark.  Only problem i

The Strangler (1964)

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Leo Kroll (Victor Buono) is a mild-mannered lab analyst at a big-city hospital.  He lives in his mother's apartments, likes to play ring-toss games, enjoys dolls - and strangling nurses.  Each doll he wins represents a woman he kills, and we join him on victim number eight, Helen Lawson (Selette Cole). Kroll is intelligent and has managed to remain under the radar.  However, his concentration on nurses has the police bringing in the staff of hospitals where the victims may have worked.  Despite Kroll's cool demeanor he gains the attention of Detective Posner (Michael Ryan) and homicide Lt. Frank Benson (David McLean), who sense something off about him. Turns out things are quite off.  He is overweight and not particularly handsome, a fact his overbearing mother (Ellen Corby) drives home at any chance along with guilt for not seeing her on a regular basis.  He is anxious to be free of her, and his anger over the lost chance when he finds out her nurse, Clara (Jeanne Bates)

Indestructible Man (1956)

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Charles "Butcher" Benton (Lon Chaney, Jr.) is scheduled to be executed the next day.  His lawyer, Paul Lowe (Ross Elliott) makes one last attempt to get Butcher to reveal where he hid the money from an armored car heist.  It seems Lowe planned it and, after the two guards were killed, convinced accomplices Squeamy Ellis (Marvin Ellis) and Joe Marcelli (Ken Terrell) to turn states evidence so that Butcher would be convicted.  Not trusting Lowe, Butcher hid the money and appears ready to take the secret to his grave - but not before informing Lowe that he will be back for all three of them. The execution goes as planned.  However, Butcher's body ends up sold to a pair of scientists doing cancer research and he is brought back to life.  The difference is that the voltage burned out his vocal cords, leaving him mute, and it also altered his cell structure, making his skin impenetrable and giving him superhuman strength.  His faculties still intact, Butcher starts the trip

Bruiser (2000)

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Henry Creedlow (Jason Flemyng) is another invisible drone at a magazine.  The only reason his boss Milo Styles (Peter Stormare) even knows who he is is because he is sleeping with Henry's wife Janine (Nina Garbiras).  Milos's wife Rose (Leslie Hope) knows that the infidelity is occurring and is attempt to capture it on film as part of starting divorce proceedings against him.  On top of it, she and Henry have an unrequited love situation happening, while Henry's best friend Jim (Andrew Tarbet) doesn't seem to be looking over Henry's investments like he should. At a barbecue thrown at Milos's house, Rose shows Henry her latest hobby: making masks.  They start out white and featureless, and she asks people to paint them to match their personality so that she can hang them on a tree.  Henry does not know what to put on his and initially leaves it blank, forgetting about the project once he sees his wife giving Milos a hand job.  He confronts her and, after goin

Fright (1956)

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George Morley (Frank Marth) is a murderer running from police.  They corner him on a bridge from which he threatens to jump.  After all attempts to get him to turn himself in have been unsuccessful, psychiatrist Dr. James Hamilton (Eric Fleming) convinces the cops to let him have a go.  Using the power of suggestion he succeeds where they failed and becomes an instant celebrity. Unfortunately, Morley wasn't the only one influenced by Hamilton that night.  Ann Summers (Nancy Malone), a wealthy British aristocrat, was also there. Somehow Hamilton's mesmerism has allowed a latent personality name Maria, who has previously been little more than a nuisance, to come out full force.  Maria is also the Baroness Maria, lover of the crown prince Rudolph of Austria, with whom she committed suicide in 1889. Newspaperman Cullen (Dean Almquist) is anxious to get the story on Hamilton, but the doctor refuses to talk after being referred to as the "Park Avenue Svengali".  Attem

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974)

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A vampire is attacking young girls in a European village.  However, instead of draining them of blood, he is draining them of life by sucking out their youth through a kiss.  Dr. Marcus (John Carson) sends word to an officer he treated during a war, Captain Kronos (Horst Janson), who happens to be a vampire hunter.  Kronos travels the countryside with his hunchbacked assistant Grost (John Cater) killing off the different kinds of vampires that exist in order to avenge a family tragedy. On the way to the village he encounters Carla (Caroline Munro) locked in the stocks along the way for dancing on a Sunday.  He frees her and she joins him, quickly becoming his lover. Upon arrival they begin to investigate and realize they are getting close to the truth after they are attacked in a tavern by a band of cutthroats led by Kerro (Ian Hendry) who are paid to dispatch Kronos.  This fails, and those responsible for the deaths become even more apparent once Dr. Marcus is turned and they di

Perkins' 14 (2009)

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It's the 10th anniversary of the abduction of his son, the last of 14 children abducted in a short period of time, and officer Duane Hopper (Patrick O'Kane) is covering a shift for another officer.  He has already spent time off from his job due to a breakdown and drinking.  His wife Janine (Michaela Mihut) is having an affair and his daughter Daisy (Shayla Beesley) barely pays attention to him. While making a round of the cells he runs into a man named Ronald Perkins (Richard Brake) who asks him to check if the judge has signed release papers for him.  During the conversation Perkins mentions he has a number of children that he has to take care of and casually drops a mention of Hopper's daughter - whom Hopper had not mentioned.  Hopper becomes suspicious that Perkins may have been the man who abducted his son Kyle, especially since Perkins is missing the finger that Kyle bit while struggling. Despite the fact that the release orders do come through and that he is to

The Dentist (1996)

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Dr. Alan Feinstone (Corbin Bernsen) is a successful Los Angeles dentist with a blonde wife (Linda Hoffman) and a beautiful house.  Unfortunately he also has I.R.S. problems and a pool boy (Michael Stadvec) that seems to be "servicing" most of the neighborhood, including his wife Brooke.  Always one step away from losing it, the sudden discovery of his wife's infidelity (on their anniversary) pushes Feinstone over the edge. At first he attempts to keep his composure but gradually starts to have hallucinations which lead to him to see a young boy with a mouth full of cavities (whose mother quickly escorts him out when Feinstone draws blood) and to molest and almost kill another patient whom he mistakes for his wife.  His assistants make the decision to send all the other patients home for the day, and Feinstone uses it as an opportunity to lure his wife to the office and do some impromptu work on her teeth. The next day he uses her to lure the pool boy to his death be

The Awful Dr. Olof (1962)

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Inspector Edgar Tanner (Conrado San Martin) returns from vacation with a fiance in tow, one Wanda Bronsky (Diana Lorys), a famous ballerina.  He wishes no more than to get married and go on his honeymoon, but immediately upon his return he is called on to solve a case where a number of women have mysteriously disappeared.  Descriptions of the killer vary wildly and it is feared that the kidnapper may be murdering them. An apt fear as the kidnapper is one Dr. Orloff (Howard Vernon), a retired scientist who last served as a prison doctor.  He arranged the fake death of his wife Arne (Perla Cristal) so that she could escape and also brought along the sadistic killer Morpho (Ricardo Valle).  Morpho is also thought by the authorities to be dead.  In truth, however, he has been operated on by Orlof and now does his bidding - killing women so that Orlof may experiment on grafting their skin to his severely disfigured daughter Melissa (also Diana Lorys).  After several failures he decides

976-EVIL II (1991)

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Spike (Patrick O'Bryan) has survived the events in the first movie, only to have everyone he loves die.  He has hit the road on his motorcycle, though he is still stalked by ringing phones and the person on the other end trying to give him his Horrorscope.  In a seedy bar in the desert he sees a newscast that the town of Slate River is being plagued by a serial killer who has just claimed his fifth victim. The killer turns out to be Mr. Grubeck (RenĂ© Assa), the dean of the local community college, who has been identified by a janitor (George "Buck" Flower) who witnessed the most recent murder.  While the community comes to grips with this, Robin (Debbie James), who used to work for Grubeck,  finds one of the cards for the Horrorscope service and starts seeing visions of the most recent murder as well as others that may take place. Spike arrives in town and quickly takes a liking to Robin, as well as figures out that the Horrorscope service is behind everything.  Whi