Homicidal starts out with two kids fighting, and the little boy takes the doll from the little girl. Then it flashes to a beautiful blonde woman named Emily (Joan Marshall). She's checking into a motel alone for the night. She tells the bellhop that she'll give him $2,000 to marry her tomorrow night at midnight, and the marriage will be annulled right after. Just in case you're wondering, that would be about equivalent to $14,301.36 today. Even though he's quite confused, he agrees because that is a lot of money. He picks her up and they go to the Justice of the Peace at midnight and wake him up. Right after the ceremony, she stabs the Justice of the Peace and takes off in the bellhop's car. All of this is very strange, I know. She swaps out cars on the way and then throws her ring out the window. She goes back to her house where she's in charge of an old lady, Helga. From here things get really complex, and there's 10 million dollars on the line (about 72 million today). I definitely did not see the ending to this movie coming. You simply have to watch it! The special feature, Psychette, is very interesting as well. I believe that Homicidal is my favorite of the collection, simply for the twist ending.
At the very beginning of Straight-Jacket, a young girl watches her mom murder her father. Now 20 years later, Carol (Diane Baker) is grown up and has not seen her mother, Lucy (Joan Crawford), since then as the doctors in the asylum wouldn't let her. But now Joan is being released. When people start dying around the farm, Carol is going to have to decide what to do about her mother! No one is safe in this thriller. I didn't really care for this one as much as the others. Yes, it still has a twist ending, but it just wasn't as shocking to me. Still it's a very good murder mystery.
13 Frightened Girls is the one movie of the collection in color. Candace Hall, known as Candy (Kathy Dunn) to her friends, is telling the story. She won first place in Latin class so she gets to drive the bus of girls to the town. They're all daughters of diplomats and they're headed back to their embassies. Candy is apparently in love with an older man called Wally (Murray Hamilton), even though she's only 16! Wally is a spy working for Candy's father, but he's not been on top of his game lately. Candy will do anything to keep him from leaving, so she decides that she should just spy on all her friends from school and sends the info to Wally under the code name "Kitten." Kitten is so successful that she gets herself into big trouble! The title made no sense though; there are never 13 girls frightened. The movie does get more interesting as it goes on, but it's definitely not a horror movie! Still, it's a good spy mystery.
13 Ghosts is in black and white mostly. They do switch to color to show you the ghosts, though. According to the beginning of the movie, you have a ghost viewer. You are supposed to use it when the screen changes to blue. If you believe in ghosts, you're supposed to look through the red half of the viewer. If you don't believe in ghosts, then you look through the blue half (which will more or less block the ghosts out completely). We just used 3-D glasses and looked through the red side, but that wasn't the easiest thing to do. It would have been nice if they had given you the viewers with the DVD. You can see the ghosts without the 3-D glasses, but nowhere near as well. I like how they show you each of the ghosts at the beginning of the movie. If you've seen the remake though, it is quite a bit different. The original is much more focused on the family than it is on the ghosts and their back stories. I do like the differences however.
Tingle: the sensation of being frightened to death. In The Tingler, Dr. Warren Chapin (Vincent Price) is convinced that the tingle is made tangible by fear, that it can be seen and even possibly extracted from the body with just the right sequence of events before death. What lengths will he go to in his pursuit of the truth? The real question is what does he do once he finds proof of the tingler!
In Zotz!, an ancient coin gives Professor Jonathan Jones (Tom Poston) very mysterious powers. He can slow down time and cause intense pain simply by pointing his finger. Once he knows what he can do, how will he decide to use this power? Can he use it to make his life better, or even to help mankind?
The Old Dark House is more of a comedic horror. Tom Penderel's (Tom Poston) strange roommate Casper (Peter Bull) asks him to drive the car that Casper just bought from him to his family's house the next day. When Tom gets there, he finds Casper dead and the family extremely weird. Tom's going to have to stay on his toes to be able to stay alive long enough to get out of this crazy house!
In Mr. Sardonicus, Sir Robert Cargrave is called by an old love, Maude (Audrey Dalton), to come to her husband, Baron Sardonicus' (Guy Rolfe) aid. When Robert gets there, he finds that the Baron wears a mask at all times, never showing his real face. There are strange experiments going on at the castle, but for no obvious reason. Sir Cargrave is going to have to figure out how to cure the afflicted Baron and rescue his love from her current plight.
All of these movies had some sort of gimmick or twist in them that was meant to shock and amaze audiences. Granted, they might not be as shocking now, but they're all still really good movies. If you like classic movies, you should go pick up this collection today!
