Louisville Halloween’s The Phantom of the Ville reviews five obscure, cult film monstrosities recently dug up from their cinematic graves!

You won’t find the good stuff on the shelves at Walmart or Target anymore. The really interesting and weird stuff is now in the domain of the boutique video labels dedicated to digging up cult obscurities and treating them like “Gone with the Wind” with extensive digital remasters and oodles of behind-the-scenes extra features. A couple of weeks ago we gave you a review of Warner Archives’ new “Two on a Guillotine” Blu ray, and this week we’ve got five more really obscure horror gems to tantalize your senses. We can’t guarantee you any of these were slighted at the Oscars, but we can promise you most of them will put a grin on your jack-o-lantern.
The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972): Available exclusively on Charles B. Pierce’s Official Legend of Boggy Creek web page (www.legendofboggycreek.com) this is the first time this legendary cult film has been restored and remastered in stunning 4K for Blu ray. My jaw literally dropped to my chest when I inserted this disc into my Blu ray player. The beauty of the film’s nature cinematography has never really been seen in its’

The Beast and the Magic Sword (1983:) Available exclusively through Mondo Macabro (www.mondo-macabro.com) this is by far the most obscure movie on this list because it has never been released in the US before on any form of media and I’m pretty sure this is also the only samurai VS werewolf film ever made. “The Beast and the Magic Sword” is actually the tenth film in a series of Spanish werewolf movies all featuring actor Paul Naschy as the cursed character of Waldemar Daninsky. Other films in the series like “The Werewolf VS the Vampire Women” and “The Night of the Werewolf” have been staples of late-night horror movie marathons for decades. Naschy, who real name was Jacinto Molina, was inspired by a childhood screening of

Spookies (1985): Available exclusively through Vinegar Syndrome (www.vinegarsyndrome.com) this release represents the first digital home video release of a video store, VHS cult classic. Let me be perfectly honest, “Spookies” is a terrible movie, but it’s chock-full of beautiful 1980’s practical monsters and special effects. The story behind the making of this movie is far more interesting and legendary than the movie itself: A group of young ambitious filmmakers and effects craftsmen were making their own monster movie when they turned to a foreign investor who ended up taking the movie from them, re-shooting a completely nonsensical wraparound story and editing the movie into the version we now know as “Spookies”. You’ll see a giant animatronic spider monster, diminutive hand-puppeted goblins, a 10 foot Grim Reaper that’s basically an early Stalkaround haunt industry prop, farting muck-men and much, much more. The fairly standard plot revolves

Billy the Kid VS Dracula (1966): There are plenty of public domain prints of this wacky film in circulation to stream online, but Kino Lorber (www.kinolober.com) has finally released a definitive, remastered Blu ray with vivid colors and as solid a transfer as could be expected from a B-movie of this era and caliber. “Billy the Kid VS Dracula” is often included on “Worst Movies Ever Made” lists alongside “Plan 9 from Outer Space”, but that kind of infamy probably has more to do with its ridiculous premise and odd blend of horror and western tropes than any cinematic ineptitude. In fact, the film feels quite a bit like a standard TV western of the period; sort of a weird episode of “Gunsmoke” written by somebody who would rather be writing vampire movies. Famed Hollywood stuntman, Chuck Courtney, plays a middle-aged Billy the Kid ready to settle down and raise a family when a vampire played by legendary horror actor, John Carradine, rides into town and kidnaps his best girl in an attempt to make her his undead bride. Although the name of Dracula is never actually mentioned in the film, the fun here for classic horror fans is getting to see Carradine exactly as he appeared as Dracula (mustache, goatee, top hat and black cape) in Universal’s “House of Frankenstein” (1944) and “House of Dracula”(1945), but IN COLOR!

