Cellar Dweller / Catacombs – Scream Factory Double Feature
Cellar Dweller follows a comic book artist whose drawings conjure a monster in the real world. This film is notable for an appearance by Jeffery Combs and better than average creature effects. There is a note at the start of the film that this transfer was made from the only existent materials which was apparently a print in the MGM vault. Considering that, the transfer looks remarkably good except for a few rough spots and some noticeable crushing of the blacks and contrast that we’ve seen in other SF releases that used prints as source material. The disc includes no extras for Cellar Dweller.
In Catacombs, a possessed monk is entombed within a monastery. 400 years later, Elizabeth comes to the monastery to do research work on the catacombs. Shortly after her arrival, the trapped demon gets loose. Catacombs has something of an interesting story in that it was the last film made by Empire Pictures (Charles Band’s company before Full Moon, Empire distributed films like Robot Jox) before it went out of business. The film was seized by a bank and wasn’t released for another five years. There’s a great bonus director’s commentary where David Schmoeller discusses this and other points of the film.
The Outing / The Godsend – Scream Factory Double Feature
The Outing concerns an evil genie whose bottle is sent to a Houston museum. Alex, the daughter of the curator, becomes possessed by the genie and lures her high school friends, under the ruse of a sleepover, to be slaughtered in the museum . The whole film is a perfect 1980’s low-budget monster splatterfest with lots of blood, lots of monster fodder characters, and lots of cheesy dialogue. The Outing is a severely edited version of a longer film called The Lamp, it’s frustrating that SF couldn’t include the extra footage since there are no other extras for this title.
The Godsend is a creepy little horror film out of Golan/Globus’ Cannon Group. A British family encounters a mysterious pregnant woman who gives birth and then disappears; leaving them with the baby. They raise it as their own but as the girl grows up their own children begin to die in suspicious ways. This film is pretty terrifying in a ‘Bad Seed’ sort of way and it has a pretty powerful soundtrack that ratchets up the suspense. The transfer for Godsend is crisp and looks great in HD. The theatrical trailer is included as an extra.
Adam Ruhl is a writer and life long Cinephile. He is the Executive
Cinema Editor of Pop Culture Beast’s Austin branch; covering festivals,
conventions, and new releases. When not filing reports, Adam can be
found stalking Alamo Drafthouse Programmers for leads on upcoming
DrafthouseFilms titles. Adam once blocked Harry Knowles entrance to a
theater until he was given extra tickets to a Roman Polanski movie.