Ah, the power of the purse…

Updated on September 10, 2008 By Ken Begg 15 Comments

I don’t have any myself, but I did mention to our a/v person that it wouldn’t hurt to beef up our DVD horror collection for Halloween.  She asked for a list of suggestions, and just bought all of them.  (Fittingly, the exact order total was $666!)  So if you’re in Park Ridge next month and check out The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or The Haunting or Pumpkinhead, you can thank me.

And the taxpayers who fund the library, of course.  Competely. 

UPDATE:  Here’s the list, for anyone interested, in no particular order.  Obvious missing titles are probably because we already owned them on DVD.  Some of these we owned, but only on VHS.

The Haunting
The Innocents
Black Sunday
Wolf Man
Bride of Frankenstein
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
Invisible Man
Horror of Dracula
Curse of the Demon
Night of the Living Dead (consult /w me if you buy this; bad versions out there)
Dead of Night (anthology)
Evil Dead
Evil Dead 2
Dawn of the Dead (old one)
House of Usher (V. Price)
Pit and the Pendulum (V. Price)
The Howling
In the Mouth of Madness
Dagon
Call of Cthulhu (awesome mock silent Lovecraft film; independent)
Motel Hell
Return of the Living Dead
Abominable Dr. Phibes
Theater of Blood
Nosferatu (silent)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Scream
Re-Animator
Kaidan
Rosemary’s Baby
The Omen (Gregory Peck)
Cemetary Man
Susperia
The Night Stalker/The Night Strangler
Trilogy of Terror
Pumpkinhead

Pin It



Related Posts

  • fish eye no miko

    Fittingly, the exact order total was $666!

    … she didn’t buy them at a little convenience store near some rail road tracks, did she?
    /obscure reference is obscure

  • Is that a Pumkinhead reference? If not, then damn your eyes! I have failed to get your reference, and have lost valuable nerd points! AIEEEEE!

  • Brad

    Caligari, The Haunting (I trust you mean the original, not that piece of crap that Jan De Bont foisted on us), and Pumpkinhead.

    Dang, you watch those movies back to back, and you’ll wonder if you didn’t eat too much Halloween candy AND drop some bad acid. *grin*

  • fish eye no miko

    Hhehe, No, not Pumpkinhead. It’s from a j-horror film called Cursed (the Japanese name is actually Cho Kowai Hanashi “A”: Yami no Karasu [A Most Horrible Story “A”: Dark Crow]). It takes place largely in a convenience store were all of the purchases (at least all the ones we see) end up adding up to “666”, or 6’s and 9’s (966, 669, etc). And then the costumers go home and… well, things just don’t turn out very well for them… O-:
    It’s sort of like The Grudge, but there are enough differences to make it interesting, I think.

  • Ah, OK then. I’ve never pretended to be an expert on J-Horror.

  • Any nerd points you lost for not getting the reference are entirely re-earned for getting them to pick up the HPLHS’ Call of Cthulhu.

    Now, if only you can get them to order the radio play versions of Mountains of Madness and Dunwich Horror… or The Testimy of Randolph Carter.

    Hmm… I might have to move down in that area if you can get ’em to get a complete HPLHS collection….

  • Tongo Rad

    Wow- Re-Animator is something I would never even consider finding in my local library (there’s some pretty perverse stuff in that one, if I remember correctly, not the sort of thing I usually see on the shelves). So- just for kicks I just did a search on our cooperative library system’s website under ‘Lovecraft’, in the DVD section, and the only thing that came up was The Call of Cthulu. Hey, it’s something. Naturally I placed a request, and I should be watching it some time next week. I’m so jazzed about that…

    On the other hand, the only thing that came up after a search of Lance Henricksen was Powder (?!!). Ken, it seems that we really could use your guiding hand up here in Northern NJ. Nice job on that list, btw.

  • Ha! I actually thought about Re-Animator, after I suggested it. I may have to raise the issue, actually. Our video librarian is pretty open to stuff, but I couldn’t exactly argue with a parent who was mad because their fourteen year old checked out Re-Animator.

    For most of these, I figured with our system’s (about 30 connected suburban libraries) *very* active inter-library loan departments, even the obscurer stuff were good buys because we’ll be the sole owner of many of these titles, and thus they’ll travel and be checked out quite a bit. Horror fans are unsurprisingly pretty active in that regard.

  • Well, I informed the video librarian of the film’s most infamous scene, and she just laughed, so it’s going into the collection anyway.

  • fish eye no miko

    Jason Leisemann said: “Any nerd points you lost for not getting the reference are entirely re-earned for getting them to pick up the HPLHS’ Call of Cthulhu.”

    Word. I rented that (again) last week. It’s awesome.

  • It truly is an amazing piece of work. They do so many things at once that could easily blow up in their faces, and get they 100% right. All on $50,000. (That’s what the producer once told me was the budget.)

    Man, it’s been a pretty good time for Lovecraft since In the Mouth of Madness, hasn’t it?

  • Tongo Rad

    Speaking of Lovecraft- have any of you seen this yet?
    http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/8/15burns.html
    “SELECTIONS FROM H.P. LOVECRAFT’S BRIEF TENURE AS A WHITMAN’S SAMPLER COPYWRITER”

    “This eerie candy will test the sanity of all but those who possess the strongest of constitutions. Strange congeries of almonds, walnuts, and pistachios dance hypnotically within, promising to reveal their eldritch secrets to anyone foolish enough to take a bite of these ancient nut clusters!”

    And so on…

    It just so happens that I finished reading ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ prior to coming across it- this guy just nails Lovecraft’s style. Brilliant, sez I.

  • As long as you’re not sticking to the movies featured on Sci-Fi Channel, yeah, it’s been pretty good.

    (Though Dagon remains distinctly inexplicable… and I’ve *read* Shadow over Innsmouth and Dagon both!)

  • BeckoningChasm

    That’s one swell list. The only one I’d quibble over would be Scream.

  • The Rev. D.D.

    “It takes place largely in a convenience store were all of the purchases (at least all the ones we see) end up adding up to “666″, or 6’s and 9’s (966, 669, etc). And then the costumers go home and… well, things just don’t turn out very well for them…”

    Did they change something for the American release? I seem to recall Will Braineater’s review saying all the purchases were nothing but 4s (like 4444.44) because that number’s associated with death over there (I think he said the pronounciation of that number is very close to the pronounciation of the word for “death.”)
    I guess it’d make sense; I imagine most people over here scratching their heads at all the 4s, shrugging and forgetting about it.