Educational Media Reviews Online

The title of this short film collection is only partially accurate. Experimental it certainly is, for most of the selections eschew the conventions of narrative cinema in favor of avant-garde technique. But terrifying it is not. The DVD packaging promises a “shocking program…a phantasmagoria of the uncanny, the dreadful, and the macabre.” Instead we get a mixed bag of shorts which will have greater appeal to experimental filmmakers than horror fans.

The DVD contains a 71-minute Main Program consisting of six shorts coupled, rather oddly, with a 32-minute “Archive” of promos and trailers from cheesy horror films of the 1950’s-70’s. The six Main Program shorts include works from the 1960’s, 80’s, 90’s, and early 21st Century and run from 5 to 21 minutes in length. The formats included range from Super-8 to 35mm Cinemascope, and print and sound qualities vary greatly. Like much non-narrative cinema, the works tend to favor form over content, often to their detriment. An optical printing effect, for example, might be interesting for a minute or two, but stretched to ten times that length it becomes insufferable. Indeed, some of the selections could be called Experiments in Tedium. The best films include The Virgin Sacrifice, a 1969 production by J.X. Williams about a young woman initiated into a Satanic cult, which effectively maintains an atmosphere of dread throughout. Also interesting is Dawn of an Evil Millennium, a Super-8mm epic inspired by the horror classic Evil Dead. Dawn is the bloodiest film of the six but also the funniest, with gore so extreme and stylized it’s more comical than disturbing.

The DVD’s campy second part, the Archive, begins with a promo for “A Date With Death,” a 1959 thriller filmed in a process called “Psychorama” in which subliminal messages flash across the screen at key moments. B-movie actor Gerald Mohr - reading atrociously off cue cards - demonstrates the effect by showing scenes from the film. A similar gimmicky promo follows, with veteran horror film producer William Castle offering a money back guarantee to anyone who isn’t frightened by his film Homicidal. In addition to these promos, trailers are included for such cult items as Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, and Blacula. The most unusual inclusion in the Archive is The Haunted Mouth, a 1973 curio commissioned by the American Dental Association featuring the voice of Cesar Romero (!) as Plaque, an insidious, invisible spirit who warns children against the dangers of not brushing and flossing.

An uneven mix of avant-garde and pop culture elements, Experiments in Terror is recommended only for the largest and most adventurous experimental cinema collections in academic and public libraries.