Hello!

First up, horrible wonder wonderful horror news:

This big surprise announcement makes my day, and might make for a great Halloween too: according to Blu-ray.com the BFI will be releasing John Parker’s genuine cult marvel Dementia aka Daughter of Horror on October 12. They’ve affixed a price to the release but no additional info, although it’s likely to be restricted to Region B. If someone has performed a digital restoration on the original 1955 film and its slight-revision version Daughter of Horror with the amazing voice of Ed McMahon, this will be a highly special item. The old Kino disc was miraculous enough, thanks to an excellent research extra by Bret Wood. But to see the show in better video quality would be just … dementedly good. Do you still enjoy old-fashioned spooky-wooky haunted house thrills?  This weird near-silent thriller delivers. You’ll never believe how far beyond haunted-house creepy Ed McMahon’s voice sounds:

“Yes, I am here. The DEMON that possesses your soul. Wait a bit. I have so much to SHOW you. So much that you are afraid to see… For this is a place where there is NO love, NO hope in the pulsing, throbbing, world of the INSANE MIND where only nightmares are real.”

Also just in the door here at CineSavant headquarters and drawing my attention is a simply beautifully-designed collector’s box for Severin Films’ The Complete Umberto Lenzi Carroll Baker Giallo Collection. Severin has been getting a lot of attention for massive, pricey and highly ‘collectable’ collections of maudit filmmakers lately, with one particular producer-director in mind.

All the features star Carroll Baker, seemingly took a three year vacation in Italo horror — did she think the movies would never reach the U.S.?  The mysterious contents beckon: So Sweet… So Perverse (Cosí dolce… cosí perversa), A Quiet Place to Kill (Paranoia), Knife of Ice (Il coltello di ghiaccio). I remember the fourth title Orgasmo attracting my attention in a movie listing somewhere long, long ago… now I’ll find out what it’s all about. I don’t want to read too much about Orgasmo before seeing it. All I know is that it was also titled Paranoia in some places and that it’s a proto-giallo, or perhaps more accurately an ‘erotic thriller,’ co-starring Lou Castel.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson