When you've got Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi, how can you go wrong? Shipwreck victim Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) is stranded on an island run by the mysterious Dr. Moreau (Laughton). Moreau is hospitable enough, but the jungle is full of menacing shapes--and what about those ominous references to the House of Pain? Parker gradually learns of Moreau's unholy experiments and worries that ...

Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Starring: Charles Laughton, Bela Lugosi, Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams, Kathleen Burke
Directed By: Erle C. Kenton

Could a title be any more direct? New Zealand maverick Peter Jackson made a splash (well, more of a splatter) with this film debut, a slapstick gross-out comedy about an alien fast-food franchise that turns a small town into a cheap source of meat. All that stands in the extraterrestrials' way is the Alien Investigation Defense Service (yes, it's a tasteless gag), a bunch of would-be Rambos who ...

Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Starring: Costa Botes, Graham Butcher, Michael Gooch, Peter Gooch, Robin Griggs

A brilliant scientist (Al "David" Hedison) becomes obsessed with perfecting a device that can transmit matter from one location to another. Successful in his initial tests, he decides to experiment using a human being¿himself. But an ordinary house fly also makes the journey with him, and when they emerge at the other end, both creatures have been terribly changed. This is the chilling story ...

Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Starring: David Hedison, Patricia Owens, Vincent Price, Herbert Marshall, Kathleen Freeman
Directed By: Kurt Neumann

Manufacturer: Paramount Home Video
Starring: Terence Knox, Paul Scherrer, Ryan Bollman, Ned Romero, Christie Clark
Directed By: David Price

The grossest movie ever made, this quintessential splatter film details the tender story of a henpecked boy, his overbearing mum, and a nasty little Sumerian rat-monkey that turns people into voracious zombies. In lesser hands, this ne plus ultra viscera-fest would be so disturbing as to be nigh-unwatchable, but the incredible energy and imagination of director Peter Jackson makes it ...

Manufacturer: Vidmark / Trimark
Starring: Timothy Balme, Jed Brophy, Stuart Devenie, Silvio Fumularo, Murray Keane

The murder rate is as high as an elephant's eye in this flaccid adaptation of Stephen King's short story. While driving through Nebraska en route to a new job, medico Burt (Peter Horton) and his wife Vicky (a pre-Terminator Linda Hamilton) nearly run over a mutilated boy who staggers from the cornfields. Seeking help, they enter the town of Gatlin, whose under-20 residents have butchered ...

Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Starring: Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton, R.G. Armstrong, John Franklin, Courtney Gains
Directed By: Fritz Kiersch

What's completely and utterly baffling about Killer Klowns is not the plot--that's rather tidily summed up by the title--but the fact that it got made at all. According to the filmmakers, (the Chiodo brothers: Charles, Edward, and Stephen) all it took to convince the studio was a one-page treatment and a picture of a clown holding a gun. It boggles the mind. Anyway, some killer Klowns ...

Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Starring: Grant Cramer, Suzanne Snyder, John Allen Nelson, John Vernon, Michael Siegel
Directed By: Stephen Chiodo

A movie that only true horror buffs could love, Army of Darkness is officially part 3 in the wild and wacky Evil Dead trilogy masterminded by the perversely inventive director Sam Raimi, who would later serve as executive producer of the popular syndicated TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Raimi's favorite actor, Bruce Campbell, returns as Ash (hero of the first two ...

Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Starring: Ian Abercrombie, Deke Anderson, Andy Bale, Billy Bryan, Bruce Campbell

If you're in the properly receptive mindset to appreciate the artistry of director Paul Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein, you may experience an unexpectedly delightful shift in attitude while watching the film. At first it appears that Morrissey is indulging in an exercise of pure camp (and it's true, he is), but then it hits you: underneath all the wretchedly awful dialogue and ...

Manufacturer: Triboro Entertainmen
Starring: Joe Dallesandro, Udo Kier, Dalila Di Lazzaro, Monique van Vooren, Arno Juerging
Directed By: Antonio Margheriti, Paul Morrissey

Tod Browning, who directed Bela Lugosi in the original Dracula, stepped into even eerier territory with this 1932 story of betrayal and retribution in the circus. Evil trapeze artist Olga Baclanova seduces and marries a midget in the circus sideshow, hoping to inherit his wealth. But in doing so, she has crossed the wrong folks: the tightly knit group of nature's aberrations, who stick ...

Manufacturer: MGM (Warner)
Starring: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates, Henry Victor
Directed By: Tod Browning