The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures brings Zé do Caixão back to the screen as the proprietor of an isolated guest house where, on a dark and stormy night, an eclectic group of strangers seek shelter.
One of the favorite tropes of the giallo genre was and is the presence of “amateur detectives;” wherein members of the public take on the challenge of solving a spate of mysterious murders. Presented here are a trio of films, all of which rely on this cherished device, and representing three distinct periods in the genre.
A paranormal investigator and his production crew gain access to a mysterious, abandoned school, but when the thrilling haunt turns deadly, the team must race to uncover the terrifying truth before they become the school’s next victims.
Cultural icon, anti-establishment statement, sadistic lord of carnival horror! With his iconic long fingernails, top hat and cape, Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe) was the creation of Brazilian filmmaker José Mojica Marins, who wrote, directed and starred in a series of outrageous movies from 1964 to 2008.
An unholy undertaker in search of the perfect woman to propagate his bloodline, Zé do Caixão made his screen debut with the first Brazilian-produced horror film, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul. Three years later, his quest would continue in This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, with Zé embarking on an even more brutal campaign of terror, aided and abetted by his hunchbacked assistant. The Strange World of Coffin Joe, meanwhile, is an anthology of three short horror films featuring a strange dollmaker, a necrophiliac balloon seller with a foot fetish, and a psychotic professor involved in sadistic rituals. Sex, perversion and sadism abound in The Awakening of the Beast as a psychiatrist experiments on four volunteers with Lsd in this surreal examination of 60s drug culture.
Diverging from horror toward satirical black comedy, The End of Man sees a naked stranger emerge from the sea to perform miracles in a nearby town and become a modern messiah whose deeds will affect the whole world. Rarely-seen sequel When the Gods Fall Asleep continues this blackly comic trajectory as our messianic cult figure sets out to right wrongs, expose corruption and end social unrest. The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures brings Zé do Caixão back to the screen as the proprietor of an isolated guest house where, on a dark and stormy night, an eclectic group of strangers seek shelter. In Hellish Flesh, Dr George Medeiros is a brilliant scientist, but a neglectful husband whose wife takes a lover and plans to murder George for his fortune, but the doctor is only disfigured and returns with a plan for revenge! Meanwhile, in Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind, the colleagues of a psychiatric doctor driven to insanity by nightmare visions of Zé do Caixão enlist the character’s creator, José Mojica Marins, to convince the patient that Zé does not exist – but all is not as it seems! Finally, in Embodiment of Evil, Marins returns to the role that made his name one last time, as Zé do Caixão emerges onto the streets of São Paulo in 2008, haunted by ghostly visions and the spirits of past victims, and still in pursuit of the woman who can give him the perfect child.
WHEN THE DEMONS OF EVIL… TAKE ALL POWER OF REASON… ONLY IMPULSE REMAINS!
Grindhouse Releasing is proud to present one of the most shocking and demented thrillers of the 1970s. William Shatner stars as Matt Stone, a deranged gigolo who preys on rich women, unable to control his murderous psychosexual urges. Directed by legendary exploitation filmmaker William Grefé (The Death Curse Of Tartu), and co-starring Jenifer Bishop (Al Adamson’s The Female Bunch), Ruth Roman (Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train), Harold “Oddjob” Sakata (Goldfinger) and William Kerwin (Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Feast), Impulse is being presented in a beautiful new master lovingly restored in 4K from rare archival 35mm film elements.
STARRING: William Shatner, Ruth Roman, Kim Nicholas, William Kerwin, Jennifer Bishop
After terrifying audiences worldwide with the blockbuster J-Horror classic Ring and its sequel, director Hideo Nakata returned to the genre for Dark Water, another highly atmospheric, and critically acclaimed, tale of the supernatural which took the common theme of the “dead wet girl” to new heights of suspense and drama.
Based upon on a short story by Ring author Koji Suzuki, Dark Water follows Yoshimi, a single mother struggling to win sole custody of her only child, Ikuko. When they move into a new home within a dilapidated and long-forgotten apartment complex, Yoshimi begins to experience startling visions and unexplainable sounds, calling her mental well-being into question, and endangering not only her custody of Ikuko, but perhaps their lives as well.
Beautifully shot by cinematographer Junichiro Hayashi (Ring, Pulse), and featuring an especially unnerving sound design, Dark Water successfully merges spine-tingling tension with a family’s heart-wrenching emotional struggle, creating one of the very finest and most unsettling contemporary Japanese horror films.
Evil Has a New Home! Step inside a vacation house of horror in this terrifying thriller that does for summer homes what Jaws did for a dip in the surf. Karen Black (The Pyx), Oliver Reed (The Brood) and Bette Davis (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?), star in this riveting haunted-house chiller that delivers hidden terrors mounting creepily as the film builds to a climax of pulverizing fright. Marian (Black) and Ben (Reed) find it hard to believe that for only $900 they’ve rented a sprawling country mansion for the entire summer. But as they settle into their isolated estate with their son (Lee Montgomery, Ben) and Ben’s aunt (Davis), they find themselves surrounded by an evil, hypnotic living presence that feeds on torture, fear and murder. The stellar cast includes Burgess Meredith (The Sentinel), Eileen Heckart (The Bad Seed), Dub Taylor (Gator) and Anthony James (High Plains Drifter). Co-written, produced and directed by horror legend Dan Curtis (The Night Strangler, Trilogy of Terror).
STARRING: Karen Black, Oliver Reed, Bette Davis, Burgess Meredith
When two girls disappear into the woods and return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, the father of one girl seeks out Chris MacNeil, who’s been forever altered by what happened to her daughter fifty years ago.