Contents 24 Monsters Per Second: The Dvd Voyage Of Ray Harryhausen: With Columbia TriStar and Warner Home Video's releases of Ray Harryhausen's feature catalog now complete, it's time for VW to pay the master stop-motion animator some long overdue, extravagant hommage! Charlie Largent gladly obliges with a 14-title overview of a career that... well, moves us!
Included: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, It Came From Beneath The Sea, Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, 20 Million Miles To Earth, The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver, Mysterious Island, Jason And The Argonauts, H.G. Wells' First Men In The Moon, One Million Years B.C., The Valley Of Gwangi, The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad, Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger And Clash Of The Titans!

DVD Spotlight: Star Trek Generations: Michael Lennick returns to our pages with a lavish review of Paramount Home Entertainment'ss new deluxe double-disc of the movie in which Captain Picard meets Captain Kirk, and Kirk... well, that would be telling!

Dog Bytes (Capsule Reviews): Two giant serpents get into a hissing match in Boa Vs Python... Michelle Yeoh and Tony Leung spark some steel in Butterfly Sword... Lawrence Tierney co-stars with his brother Edward in the hard-hitting crime drama The Hoodlum... Aerial pulp thrills predominate in Pilot X: Murder In The Sky... Rex Harrison and John Saxon go Bollywood in Raiders Of The Sacred Stone... Fangoria's Michael Gingold heads the cast of the DTV compendium The Tenement... the J-Horror trilogy Tomie, Tomie Re-Birth and Tomie Replay... and somehow they made a movie about an Undiscovered Tomb!

Joe Dante's Fleapit Flashbacks: George Lucas has his first blockbuster success with American Graffiti... Sean Connery returns to challenge Blofeld once again in Diamonds Are Forever... Angel Tompkins plays moll to a gang of bankrobbing midgets in Little Cigars... Francis Coppola embarks on a new road of independent filmmaking in The Rain People... Pam Grier growls at a different kind of Bat Man in Twilight People... and Joe Don Baker swings a different kind of bat in Walking Tall!

DVD Reviews: William Marshall finds belated stardom in Blacula and Scream Blacula Scream... Elvis joins forces with JFK (?) to combat a soul-suckin' mummy in Bubba Ho-Tep... scads of James Bonds scurry across the screen in the monumentally excessive Casino Royale... Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Delon join forces once again for the classic heist film Le Cercle Rouge... Paul Naschy makes his American horror film debut in Countess Dracula's Orgy Of Blood and returns to the screen as Waldemar Danisky in Tomb Of The Werewolf... Larry Cohen writes and directs a couple of offbeat pictures called Perfect Strangers and Special Effects... Anton LaVey is the subject of the exploitative documentary Satanis The Devil's Mass, while Ray Dennis Steckler offers the chaotic co-feature Sinthia, The Devil's Doll... Japanese animation gets jumper-cabled in Speed Racer Collector's Edition... and Christina Lindberg takes aim at the people who took her eye and ruined her life in Thriller-A Cruel Picture (aka They Call Her One-Eye)!

Plus! Import DVD reviews of a new German anamorphic release of Hammer's Plague Of The Zombies and Tsui Hark's cannibal frenzy We're Going To Eat You!

Biblio Watchdog: Reviews of Nightmares In Red, White And Blue by Joseph Maddrey and Cult Movies In Sixty Seconds: The Best Films In The World In Less Than A Minute by Soren McCarthy!

Audio Watchdog: Douglas E. Winter takes a privileged listen to a promotional-only issue of Tyler Bates' soundtrack to the Dawn Of The Dead remake, as well as a two-disc bootleg... and offers additional reviews of Jeff Danna's Resident Evil: Apocalypse and the various artist compilation Music From & Inspired By Resident Evil: Apocalypse... Dan Mudford and Pete Woodhead's Shaun Of The Dead... and Hideakuri Sakurai & Kunihiko Murai's The Best Of Lone Wolf And Cub!

All this plus The Return Of Donnie Dunagan and much, much more!

Contents Things from the Attic: By Popular Demand! We're bringing back our 'Tapes from the Attic' feature on an irregular basis, but now it's expanded into 'Things from the Attic'-not just domestic tapes, but rare foreign tapes, laserdiscs and even out-of-print DVDs! In a special 'EuroCult' installment, Tim Lucas blows the dust off Riccardo Freda's Double Face, The House With The Yellow Carpet, Antonio Margheriti's Disneyesque Mr. Superinvisible, Ruggero Deodato's superhero actioner Phenomenal And The Treasure Of Tutankamen, and a comparison review of Margheriti's Seven Deaths In The Cat's Eye and its French widescreen edition, Les Diablesses!

Joe Dante's Fleapit Flashbacks: More vintage fun as Joe Dante tears your tickets to retrospective reviews of Cheri Caffaro in The Abductors... Peter Cushing and Patrick Macnee in Blood Suckers... Ingrid Pitt in the heavily-cut domestic release of Countess Dracula... Alex Cord and Samantha Eggar in Armando Cripino's The Dead Are Alive... Woody Allen's R-rated sketch comedy Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask)... and Giacopetti/Prosperi's appalling 'You Are There' shockumentary about slavery in the Old South, Farewell, Uncle Tom!

DVD Spotlight: Interested in how Kino on Video's box set The Wong Kar-Wai Collection stacks up against import disc releases of As Tears Go By, Chungking Express, Days Of Being Wild, Fallen Angels and Happy Together? John Charles answers all your questions in a detailed Spotlight review!

Dog Bytes: Capsule reviews of Lui's Bun~uel's surrealist classic L'Age d'Or... Bob Swaim's film noir pastiche La Balance... Peter Cushing makes his final performance in Biggles: Adventures In Time... Don Johnson and his best friend trod a post-apocalyptic landscape in A Boy And His Dog... anime explodes into wild pop art in Dead Leaves... Catherine Breillat directs a deadly portrait of sibling rivalry in Fat Girl... Catherine Deneuve introduces Susan Sarandon to The Hunger... Lon Chaney Jr. quivers his baggy eyes in the '50s programmer Indestructible Man... four heads aren't necessarily better than two when you buy the MGM double feature The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant/The Thing With Two Heads... Moon Lee CHoi-fung lashes out in the martial arts spectacular Iron Fist... the low-budget graveyard lunacy of Ring Of Terror... John Carradine guards the entry to Hell In The Sentinel... Michael Murphy hits the campaign trail in Robert Altman & Garry Trudeau's political satire Tanner '88... our nation's figure head runs a few victims up the flagpole in Uncle Sam... and we witness the birth of psychoanalysis in Young Dr. Freud!

DVDs: In-depth reviews of William Castle's swan song Bug... Robert Altman's masterpiece about the gambling bug, California Split ... Robert Quarry finds stardom at AIP in Count Yorga, Vampire and its sequel The Return Of Count Yorga... Robert Bresson's ascetic classics Diary Of A Country Priest and A Man Escaped... Mark Redfield's surprising homegrown production of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde... Fangoria hosts a filmmaking competition with Fangoria Blood Drive: America's Best Short Horror Films, hosted by Rob Zombie... Grade A giggles in Larry Blamire's B-movie spoof The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra... a trio of Claude Chabrol suspensers (La Ce're'monie, Masques, Story Of Women)... Vincent Price meets John Carradine at The Monster Club... Macha Me'ril makes a terrifying impression in Night Train Murders... Matt Frewer dons a deerstalker cap in yet another Sherlock Holmes Collection... Santa decks the halls with the bowels of Holly in Silent Night, Deadly Night and Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2... Japan's favorite superhero returns in Ultraman Gaia The Battle In Hyperspace... Alberto Sordi stars in Federico Fellini's debut feature The White Sheik... and an excursion into Japanese 'pink' cinema with The World Of Geisha and A Woman With Red Hair!

Imports: Tsui Hark directs a legion of bloodsucking flappers in his debut feature The Butterfly Murders... and Peter Cushing battles an army of bonesucking silicate creatures on the Island Of Terror, then sweats out an alien invasion with Christopher Lee on the Night Of The Big Heat!
Audio Watchdog: Douglas E. Winter reviews Trey Parker & Marc Shaiman's score for Team America: World Police, Jeff Rona's Traffic: The Miniseries, Basil Poledouris's Amerika, and also The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Volume 3 with music by Jerry Goldsmith, Morton Stevens, David Grusin and Gerald Fried!

Contents Issue #117-March 2005
The Strange Loves of Yutte Stensgaard: An Interview with the Vampire!: Danish filmmaker Nicolas Barbano interviews his country's most famous horror personality, the lovely and elusive star of Lust For A Vampire and Scream And Scream Again! In this exclusive interview, Ms. Stensgaard talks about her life today, her philosophies and the peace she has made with her movies from the screaming Seventies!

DVD Spotlight: Your friendly neighborhood VW critic Shane M. Dallmann spins his opinionated web on Buena Vista Home Entertainment's lavish box set of Spidey's complete animated exploits from the 1960s! Is Shane right? Listen, Fred - he's got Video Watchdog cred!

Dog Bytes: Capsule reviews of Irene Papas in a George Tsavellas' 1961 production of the Greek tragedy Antigone, plus... H. B. Warner takes his gun and badge into the City Of Missing Girls... vehicles guzzle more than gas in Peter Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris... an enchanted pendant makes unsuspecting people horny in Curse Of The Erotic Tiki... 'Devil's Night' Halloween riots and worse await you in Filthy... Anthony Mann co-directs with Alfred Werker in the noir classic He Walked By Night... Tangerine Dream lends a new prog score to the Italian silent spectacle L'Inferno... Sonny Chiba cracks a few dozen more skulls in Killing Machine... Jack LaRue runs the mob in the UK crime programmer Murder In The Night... Don Dohler rehashes his earlier The Alien Factor in Nightbeast... Marlon Brando and Richard Boone terrorize Pamela Franklin in The Night Of The Following Day... vampires are on the loose in the DTV horror anthology Realms Of Blood... Repo Man director Alex Cox turns his attention to 17th century drama in Revenger's Tragedy... Rob Lowe heads an all-star cast in TNT's remake of 'Salem's Lot... and Frank Sinatra plays a would-be Presidential assassin in Suddenly!

Joe Dante's Fleapit Flashbacks: Reminisce about the heyday of grindhouse entertainment with these vintage reviews: Lucretia Love stars as a good-girl warrior in Alfonso Brescia's Battle Of The Amazons... Clint Eastwood and Don Rickles head an all-star cast in the Yugoslavia-made Kelly's Heroes... David Hess scares the yell out of everybody in Wes Craven's The Last House On The Left ('It's only a movie... it's only a movie...')... Kate Jackson and David Selby endure a Night Of Dark Shadows... Marie Liljedahl heats up the screen with a little help from ABBA's Bjorn and Benny in Joe Sarno's The Seduction Of Inga... and Antoinette Bower uses animal extract to turn Craig Littler into Superbeast!

DVDs: In-depth reviews! Ashton Kutcher makes a powerful bid to be taken more seriously in the child abuse fantasy The Butterfly Effect... Roman Polanski directs Sharon Tate for the first and only time in The Fearless Vampire Killers... Tobe Hooper shows us that there are worse things awaiting man than the sideshow in The Funhouse... Bret Wood chronicles the darker avenues of road safety cinema in the documentary Hell's Highway: The True Story Of Highway Safety Films... Fantoma delivers more discs in their 'Educational Archives' series: Driver's Ed, On The Job, Religion and Patriotism... Umberto Lenzi tackles an Edgar Wallace krimi in Seven Blood-Stained Orchids and dabbles in the giallo genre with Spasmo... and Lucio Fulci's Zombie is followed up with the not-for-the-squeamish Zombi 3 and Zombie 4: After Death!

Plus: Import Reviews!: Chang Cheh directs the Shaw Brothers classic The Brave Archer (aka Kung Fu Warlords)... a new Italian import double-feature offering first-time-ever anamorphic masters of Mario Bava's Lisa And The Devil and The House Of Exorcism... and the unauthorized Australian import of Sergio Martino's tantalizingly titled Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key (aka Gently Before She Dies), starring Edwige Fenech!

Biblio Watchdog: Reviews of Mr Skin's Skincyclopedia by Mr. Skin... Brad Stevens' Monte Hellman: His Life And Films... and William Tsutsui's Rondo Award-nominated Godzilla On My Mind: Fifty Years Of The King Of Monsters!

Audio Watchdog: Douglas E. Winter lends his reliable ears to an amazing new two-disc set of Bronislau Kaper's music for the 1962 Mutiny On The Bounty, as well as other Film Score Monthly titles... and covers recent releases composed by The X-Files' Mark Snow, including The Best Of Millennium and Helter Skelter!

All this and another brilliant Charlie Largent cover, Tim Lucas's 'The Watchdog Barks' and much, much more!

Contents Universal's Other Monsters!: ~A Legacy Written in Gauze, Claws and Tana Leaves~: Bill Cooke follows his Rondo-nominated coverage of Universal's first three Classic Monster 'Legacy Collections' in VW #111 with a Monster Rally sequel of his own! Read all about the screen sagas of The Invisible Man, The Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon... all thirteen of 'em! As before, lavishly illustrated with original art by Charlie Largent and rare stills from the Del Valle Archive!

DVD Spotlight: A Tale Of Two Sisters: Tim Lucas reviews the hottest new chapter in the annals of Asian horror: a ghostly tale of broken lives and shattered minds by Korean director Kim Jee-woon - now available in single and two-disc editions from Tartan Asia Extreme!

Dog Bytes: You get pretty much what you'd expect in Bloodsucking Redneck Vampires... teens find holiday peril in Bloody New Year... original horror host John Zacharle chortles his merry way through the DTV epic Dr. Horror's Erotic House Of Idiots... Something Weird Video delivers the ultimate Andy Milligan double feature with The Ghastly Ones / Seeds Of Sin... an anime classic spins off a new sci-fi police procedural series in Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex Vol. 01... Fred Olen Ray and Steve Latshaw argue on the commentary track of JACK-O... Sonny Chiba brains some bulls in Karate Bullfighter... our coverage of a major anime series concludes with Noir Volume 6: Cloaks And Daggers and Volume 7: The End Of The Matter... Shakespeare comes to DVD in contemporary attire in Richard The Second... a new DVD release of the Vincent Price thriller Shock... and Fred Olen Ray gives Dinosaur Island a sexy makeover as Teenage Cavegirl!

Joe Dante's Fleapit Flashbacks: Some real obscurities this month, along with a couple of cult classics, as Joe attends first run screenings of the German sexinstruktion import The Adult Workshop On Love... Peter Lawford meets Luciano Pigozzi in Dead Run... something called The Deviates... Lenore Kasdorf as a kung fu-fighting stewardess in New World's forgotten softsploitation Fly Me... George Lucas spins a student film into his directorial debut feature THX 1138... Marvin Gaye scores Trouble Man... and Green Acres director Richad L. Bare makes his bid for horror history with Wicked, Wicked ('filmed in Duo-Vision')!

DVDs: Bill Cooke on Tod Browning's Freaks... Kim Newman on Larry Cohen's mutant baby trilogy It's Alive, It's Alive Ii: It Lives Again and It's Alive III: Island Of The Alive... Shane M. Dallmann on Stephen King's Lars von Trier adaptation Kingdom Hospital: The Entire Series... Sam & Rebecca Umland on John Woo's all-star Philip K. Dick adaptation Paycheck... Richard Harland Smith on Shikoku, an early ghost story appearance by Kill Bill's Chiaki Kuriyama... plus reviews of Stephen Sommers' overblown Van Helsing... Zero Focus and The Demon, two adaptations of Japanese mystery writer Seicho Matsumoto... Lucio Fulci's paura pasta Zombi 2: 25th Anniversary Special Edition... and Import reviews of The Norman J. Warren Collection (Satan's Slave, Prey, Terror and Inseminoid)! Also, John Charles praises the boundary-shattering horror of the Asian horror anthology Three... Extremes and the feature-length 'director's cut' of its tastiest story, Dumplings: Three... Extremes!

Biblio Watchdog: Anthony Ambrogio reviews Mark Clark's Smirk, Sneer and Scream - Great Acting In Horror Cinema!

Audio Watchdog: Douglas E. Winter reviews a number of recent solo piano soundtrack releases by Philip Glass and Dave Grusin, as well as other soundtracks from Glass and Craig Armstrong!

All this - plus the first installment of Tim Lucas' Voom Viewing Diary.

Contents The Prosperities of Vice: An Unholy Three By Jess Franco: Tim Lucas essays three of Franco's earliest Sadean works: Marquis De Sade's Justine, Eugenie... The Story Of Her Journey Into Perversion, and The Bloody Judge!

DVD Spotlight: Franco's 101 Women: There is still more Franco to be found as we review the seminal WIP movie 99 Women, the Sax Rohmer pastiche The Girl From Rio, and the psychedelic fan favorite Venus In Furs! Also in this issue's 'Import' review section, reviews of Franco's 'monster rally' movies Dra'cula contra Frankenstein (aka The Screaming Dead) and Ein Jungfrauen in den Krallen von Frankenstein (aka The Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein)!

Watchdog News: By Popular Demand! VW's News department returns with information about Columbia's 50th Anniversary Godzilla releases... a look at some interesting Italian DVD releases, including a couple of early films photographed by none other than Mario Bava... and a report card assessing the quality of the 8 movies comprising Volumes 1 and 2 of Rhino Home Video's Horrible Horrors!

Dog Bytes: Vic Morrow and Fred Williamson take action in 1990: Bronx Warriors... Gwen Verdon vies for the soul of Tab Hunter in Damn Yankees... Dennis Weaver tries to lose a tailgater in Steven Spielberg's Duel... Roger Corman crosses the finish line first in The Fast And The Furious... Jayne Mansfield falls for Tom Ewell because The Girl Can't Help It... Tom Hanks makes his big screen debut in the '80s slasher pic He Knows You're Alone... Meet a vampire slayer named Alucard in the anime Hellsing: Complete Collection... Sonny Chiba graduates from bulls to bears in Karate Bearfighter and then fights blood-bathing demon women in Legend Of The Eight Samurai... Ulli Lommel takes Suzanna Love into Hitchcock territory in the Vertigo-like Olivia... a comatose patient wreaks mental havoc in the extremely graphic Italian rip-off Patrick Still Lives... two different silent film adaptations of The Student Of Prague... a J-Horror DTV series reaches its conclusion with Tomie: Forbidden Fruit... and George Stover polishes his stake and sharpens his crucifix before going up against the Vampire Sisters!

Joe Dante's Fleapit Flashbacks: This month, Joe's grindhouse retrospective reviews favor the Old West as 'Alan Smithee' directs Richard Widmark in Death Of A Gunfighter... Rock Hudson saves Sylva Koscina from being raped by a bunch of horny teens (then rapes her himself) in Hornets' Nest... Omar Sharif presides over a brutal and unusual game in The Horsemen... Mary Woronov stars with fellow Warhol Factory alumni (and John Carradine!) in token horror title Silent Night, Bloody Night... Swiss filmmaker Erwin C. Dietrich offers a new definition of 'layover' in The Swingin' Stewardesses... Gary Graver directs and photographs the obscure exploitationer There Was A Little Girl... and John Wayne saddles up with Ann-Margret in The Train Robbers!

DVDs: Subterranean film noir in the Chinese import Blind Shaft... Danny Elfman does Cab Calloway while Susan Tyrell does Herve' Villechaize in Forbidden Zone... Tong Lung doubles Bruce Lee and also plays his brother in the delirious Game Of Death II... Japan's biggest export stomps his old stomping grounds in Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.... Paul Naschy rules in a special two-disc set devoted to one of his scariest films, Horror Rises From The Tomb... three schlocky '50s sci-fi films are assembled for Horrors From Space Collection (Teenagers From Outer Space, Phantom From Space and Killers From Space)... Lifeforce is given an anime remake (sort of) in Kimera... ambitious anime culminates in a massive WTF ending in Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth and The End Of Evangelion... Paul Naschy makes an extraordinary comeback in the new Rojo Sangre... Misty Mundae loses her virginity to a crucifix in Satan's School For Lust... a bunch of slackers eventually arise to the occasion of saving humanity from a zombie takeover in Shaun Of The Dead... H.G. Wells follows Jack the Ripper into the disco era in Time After Time... and a woman possessed by evil forces is compelled to commit murders in the South Korean period fantasy The Legend Of The Evil Lake!

Audio Watchdog: Douglas E. Winter reviews Digitmovies' new two-disc set of Bruno Nicolai's Eugenie De Sade '70 (containing his music for Eugenie... The Story Of Her Journey Into Perversion and other Franco films of the early '70s) and the latest 'Bruno Nicolai in Giallo' disc, La Coda Dello Scorpione! Also, Locust Music's soundtrack of the classic Cornel Wilde adventure The Naked Prey!

All this... plus Bob Burns' report on Paul Blaisdell's unheralded contributions to Teenagers From Outer Space.

Contents Dr. Paul Armstrong's: Handy Guide to '50s Sci-Fi Heroes: Larry Blamire (that 'Lost Skeleton of Cadavra' guy!) makes his VW debut with an amusing and insightful tribute to the stars who inspired him: Arthur Franz, Richard Carlson, John Agar... and every other screen scientist who rolled up his sleeves to clean a monster's clock!

Triffids on the March: From John Wyndham to the BBC: David J. Schow turns a new leaf by puttering around the science fiction classic THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS-from its roots in science fiction, to its motion picture offshoot, and its full flowering as a BBC serial (now available on DVD)!

Dog Bytes: Capsule reviews of Al Adamson's BLAZING STEWARDESSES... Lash LaRue's return to the screen in the North Carolinian horror flicks THE DARK POWER and ALIEN OUTLAW... the Austrian existentialism of FREE RADICALS... the South Korean blade vengeance of SWORD IN THE MOON... and Image Entertainment's two-disc retrospective THE MUNSTERS: AMERICA'S FIRST FAMILY OF FRIGHT!

Joe Dante's Fleapit Flashbacks: Joe collects ticket stubs for ACT OF THE HEART, a religious quasi-horror film starring Donald Sutherland and Genevi?ve Bujold... John Carradine and Joi Lansing in BIGFOOT... Mark Lester makes a play for family entertainment in BLACK BEAUTY... George C. Scott brings star power to Richard Fleischer's crime drama THE LAST RUN... Calvin Lockhart and Rosalind Cash headline the obscure blaxploitation murder mystery MELINDA... John Houseman grades Timothy Bottoms' law school tests in THE PAPER CHASE... and Paul Bartel makes his directorial debut with the memorably creepy PRIVATE PARTS!

DVDs: In-depth reviews of AIP's monster teen comedies GHOST OF DRAGSTRIP HOLLOW and THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI (starring Boris Karloff as The Corpse!)... the British-made Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT and THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT... Cheryl Smith lends her signature performance to Richard Blackburn's LEMORA: A CHILD'S TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL... Fisherman Richard Harris is targeted for revenge by ORCA: THE KILLER WHALE... Steven Soderbergh parodies mainstream and arthouse cinema in SCHIZOPOLIS... Shinya Tsukamoto explores the middle ground of blackmail and erotic fantasy in A SNAKE IN JUNE... STREET MOBSTER and GRAVEYARD OF HONOR, two peak period yakuza thrillers from Kinji Fukasaku... THE UP SERIES, Michael Apted's 40 years-in-the-making study of British youth... and Park Ki-Hyung's seminal South Korean horror hit WHISPERING CORRIDORS!

Imports: Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi set the screen ablaze in Wong Kar-wai's melancholy, sci-fi-tinged masterpiece 2046... Nicole Kidman suffers a nightmare on Elm Street in Lars von Trier's DOGVILLE... and veteran director Bruno Mattei hits the DTV trenches with SNUFF TRAP!

Plus!: The 100th installment of Douglas E. Winter's 'Audio Watchdog' column... Kim Newman's 'Watchdog News' report on BBC4's live remake of THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT... 'Biblio Watchdog' reviews of Tom Johnson & Mark A. Miller's THE CHRISTOPHER LEE FILMOGRAPHY and editor Stephen Prince... 'Letterbox' appearances by director/cameraman Gary Graver and producer Richard Gordon...

...and much more!

Contents Shades of Renfield: 10 Buzzing Performances: To complement the arrival of his new novel THE BOOK OF RENFIELD: A GOSPEL OF DRACULA, Tim Lucas looks back on the screen history of one of the most beloved characters in the annals of horror fiction! Whose portrayal best embodies Renfield as Bram Stoker described him? Which of these performances are underrated? Which are overrated? Who among today's actors might still do justice to the role? Find out in this detailed analysis of ten outstanding performances!

DVD Spotlight: As long as we're talking about Renfield, Kim Newman weighs in with his appraisals of John Badham's romantic 1979 version of DRACULA, starring Frank Langella, and the recent short-lived Canadian program, DRACULA THE SERIES!

Dog Bytes: Capsule reviews of TENEBRAE's Eva Robins in the Pierfrancesco Campanella giallo BAD INCLINATION... David Carradine plays four roles (and the flute!) in the Zen fantasy CIRCLE OF IRON... Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee trace the origins of Evil in THE CREEPING FLESH... the James Gunn-scripted movie that calls itself 'Sister-lickin' good,' INBRED REDNECK ALIEN ABDUCTION... Sonny Chiba stages a 'Hall of Mirrors' battle of his own in KARATE FOR LIFE... Merchant Ivory tackle a Bombay police procedural in THE PERFECT MURDER... new China tensions and homicide merge in SEVENTEEN YEARS... and screenwriter James Gunn shows a little more ambition in the superhero-spoof, THE SPECIALS!

Joe Dante's Fleapit Flashbacks: It's 'sex and suspense' month here in the Fleapit, as Joe hunkers down for Seventies screenings of the SCREW Magazine-related EROTICON... the third and final 'Ginger' movie GIRLS ARE FOR LOVING... Robert Culp and Bill Cosby surpise I SPY viewers' expectations in HICKEY AND BOGGS... the biker DIRTY DOZEN variation THE LOSERS (aka NAM'S ANGELS)... LUNCH (from the auteur who brought you STINKYBUTT!)... PRIVATE SCHOOL GIRLS, a non-SCHOOLGIRL REPORT series look at West German schoolgirls... Mercedes McCambridge in the rural jailbait meller SIXTEEN... and little Mark Lester returns to witness a political assassination in John Hough's SUDDEN TERROR (aka EYEWITNESS)!

DVDs: In-depth reviews of BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES VOLUME TWO... the Czech zombie import CHOKING HAZARD... PITCH BLACK's Vin Diesel returns in THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT... Stuart Whitman serves the Kool-Aid in Rene Cardona Jr's exploitative GUYANA: CRIME OF THE CENTURY... Antoine Fuqua casts Bond hopeful Clive Owen as KING ARTHUR... Tod Slaughter, the first British horror star, chortles over the topside of melodrama in THE MURDER IN THE RED BARN, SWEENEY TODD THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET, CRIMES AT THE DARK HOUSE, THE FACE AT THE WINDOW and HORROR MANIACS... two people are abandoned in shark-infested OPEN WATER... Hywel Bennett traces his family wee in the penis transplant comedy PERCY... a science fiction saga is set in the alternative history of the 1920s in the anime SAKURA WARS 1: RETURN OF THE SPIRIT WARRIORS and SAKURA WARS 2: WEDDING BELLS... Rene Cardona Sr. serves up the JULES AND JIM of killer shark pictures with TINTORERA... Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis vie for shapely princess Janet Leigh in THE VIKINGS... and Alfred Hitchcock puts a neorealistic spin on suspense in THE WRONG MAN!

Imports: In-depth reviews of the erotic '70s BBC serial CASANOVA, starring Frank Finlay... Max Mok Siu-chung falls in love with the beautiful daughter of a flesh-eating, blood-drinking spirit in the Shaw Brothers' THE ENCHANTRESS... John Woo's A BETTER TOMORROW is ripped-off in detail by the Japanese LAST DROP OF BLOOD... and Laura Antonelli stars in an obscure adaptation of Georges Bataille's 'Story of the Eye' called Yo soy la pas?on ('I Am Passion')!

Audio Watchdog: Douglas E. Winter assembles his choices for the Best (and the Rest) soundtrack releases of 2004!

Biblio Watchdog: Reviews of John T. Soister's UP FROM THE VAULT: RARE THRILLERS OF THE 1920S AND 1930s and Caelum Vatnsdal's THEY CAME FROM WITHIN: A HISTORY OF CANADIAN HORROR CINEMA!

Plus!: Letterbox correspondence from Yutte Stensgaard... the continuation of Tim's VOOM Diary...

...and much more!

Contents Edison's FRANKENSTEIN: Found & Lost?: Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, the phonograph... and the American horror film! Stephen R. Bissette reviews this 1910 relic, as it appears on a short-lived, already out-of-print DVD release, and ponders how the recent death of preservationist Alois F. Detlaff, Sr. will affect this once-lost film's future availability!

LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION: Steven Lloyd returns to our pages with a detailed appraisal of the 56 cartoons included in Warner Home Video's first box set of the classic Warner Bros. cartoons! Next issue: the second box!

VIDEODROME: Bill Cooke cracks the shrinkwrap on Criterion's deluxe edition of David Cronenberg's prophetic tale of techno-terror!

Dog Bytes: Capsule reviews of Ray Dennis Steckler's noir tribute BODY FEVER... Joy Houck Jr.'s BOGGY CREEK knock-off CREATURE FROM BLACK LAKE... Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee and Barbara Steele interpret an uncredited H.P. Lovecraft story in CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR... John Turturro seeks the answers to his wife's random murder in the Hubert Selby-scripted FEAR X... Halle Berry stars in the Dark Castle-produced GOTHIKA... MGM releases yet another disc of Dan Curtis' THE NIGHT STALKER / THE NIGHT STRANGLER... the gruesome South Korean mystert OLDBOY... the return of BEYOND THE DOOR producer Ovidio Assonitis in the giallo-like RED RIDING HOOD... a detective tries to find out why 54 schoolgirls would join hands and leap onto the tracks before an oncoming train in SUICIDE CLUB... Buster Crabbe ogles burly-q queen Ann Corio in the Retromedia double feature WHITE HUNTRESS and JUNGLE SIREN... Millie Perkins sharpens her blade to deal with some football players in THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA... Ichi the Blind returns in ZATOICHI 13: ZATOICHI'S VENGEANCE and ZATOICHI 15: ZATOICHI'S CANE SWORD... a marbles championship assumes unsuspected importance in the enchanting Mexican fantasy ZURDO... all this, plus remarks on the box set releases of FIREBALL XL-5... MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV'S STORIES FROM MY CHILDHOOD... TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED SET 1... THE TWILIGHT ZONE - THE DEFINITIVE COLLECTION, SEASON 1... and THE TWILIGHT ZONE - SEASON 1 1985 -86!

Joe Dante's Fleapit Flashbacks: Joe is back with vintage trade magazine reviews of the Lee Van Cleef/Warren Oates Western BARQUERO... football pro Terry Carter turns detective in the blaxploitation item BOOTS TURNER... John Carradine, Robert Dix and other Al Adamson vets rev up for a slice of Civil War bloodshed called CAIN'S WAY... Sibylla Kay is the perky au pair girl in Tigon's MONIQUE... George Hilton and Klaus Kinski shoot up the West (West Germany, that is) in THE RUTHLESS FOUR... and an all-star cast turns topsy-turvy in the Irwin Allen disaster epic THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE!

DVDs: In-depth reviews of Patty McCormack as THE BAD SEED... Marc Singer talks to the animals in THE BEASTMASTER... John Daniels sweet-talks some red hot mamas in BLACK SHAMPOO... Christina Ricci survives a werewolf bite in CURSED (unrated version, of course)... Pierce Brosnan finds himself seduced by the lifestyle of those who worship Kali the Destroyer in THE DECEIVERS... Peter Fonda leans on the speedometer in the '70s drive-in classics DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY and RACE WITH THE DEVIL... Tyrone Power drinks until he becomes a pathetic sideshow act in NIGHTMARE ALLEY... Lee Marvin rescues Sissy Spacek from meat-eating Gene Hackman in PRIME CUT... and alien lifeforms are shoved down the throats of the unsuspecting in STARSHIP TROOPERS 2: HERO OF THE FEDERATION (would you like to know more?)

Imports: In-depth reviews of Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence in the Brian Eno-scored THE DEVIL'S MEN... the 'Dark Tales' of author Pu Songling are adapted in the Hong Kong omnibus FAIRY, GHOST, VIXEN... and Jim Mitchum joins the ranks of Eurocult stars in the early Sergio Martino Western MASSACRE AT GRAND CANYON (available as a German DVD import under the title KEINEN CENT F?R RINGOS KOPF)!

Audio Watchdog: Douglas E. Winter stops watching the skies long enough to review Film Score Monthly's exciting new soundtracks of THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD and the 1970's remake of KING KONG (John Barry)!

Biblio Watchdog: Ramsey Campbell joins the VW Kennel with a review of BEATING THE DEVIL: THE MAKING OF NIGHT OF THE DEMON by Tony Earnshaw... and Bill Cooke reviews Roy Webber's THE DINOSAUR FILMS OF RAY HARRYHAUSEN!

...and much more!