griggs's - Rented List

Show moreShow less

Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns from college in America to his father's (Claude Rains) mansion in Wales. After meeting Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers) in the local village, he escorts her to the local fair.

She tells him the local legend of the werewolf, but he laughs it off - even when gypsy fortune teller Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya) and her son Bela (Bela Lugosi) also tell him to beware. Later in the evening Gwen's friend Jenny is attacked by a wild wolf. Larry rescues her, but is bitten in the process. Sure enough, when the next full moon comes round, Larry finds himself transformed into the wolfman - a murderous creature that can only be destroyed by silver.

Towering ominously among the shadows of the Carpathian Mountains, Castle Dracula strikes fear in the hearts of the Transylvanian villagers below.

Show moreShow less

Faust's tale is a classic one of a man who sells his soul to the devil. In an attempt to gain control of the Earth, Mephisto (Emil Jannings) wagers an angel (Werner Puetterer) that he can corrupt the soul of the elderly professor Faust (Gosta Ekman).

Mephisto unleashes a plague that spreads amongst its inhabitants. Faust, unable to find a cure-renounces both God and science invoking the aid of Satan through a mysterious book.

Show moreShow less

The first and possibly the greatest pairing of Lugosi and Karloff is one of the darkest, most macabre horrors ever made. Dr.

Werdegast (Bela Lugosi), a POW for fifteen years has been freed and now seeks news of his wife and daughter and vengeance on Hjalmar Poelzig, the man whose betrayal lead to his imprisonment and the deaths of thousands of his countrymen during the war. He tracks him down to the castle he has built on the site of their old fortress and soon discovers the diabolical secrets held within its walls. Poelzig is now the leader of a satanic cult, engaging in macabre practises and rituals. One man's pure evil against the others tormented need for revenge leads to an absorbing battle and a shocking climax.

Show moreShow less

When Samira (Lupita Nyong'o) returns home to New York City, her simple trip turns into a harrowing nightmare when mysterious creatures that hunt by sound attack.

Accompanied by her cat Frodo and an unexpected ally (Joseph Quinn), Samira must embark on a perilous journey through the city that has suddenly gone silent, where the only rule is to stay quiet to stay alive.

Show moreShow less

Trapped in a violent, controlling relationship with a wealthy and brilliant scientist, Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) escapes in the dead of night and disappears into hiding. But when her abusive ex suddenly dies, Cecilia suspects his death was a hoax.

As a series of eerie coincidences turn lethal, threatening the lives of those she loves, Cecilia's sanity begins to unravel while she desperately tries to prove she is being hunted by someone nobody can see.

Show moreShow less

Pasolini's final and most controversial film has been banned censored and reviled the world over since it's first release. The film is based on the Marquis de Sade's novel '120 Days of Sodom', with the setting transposed to Mussolini's miniature Fascist Republic of Salo, Italy in 1944.

The film's content and imagery is extreme, and it retains the power to shock, repel and distress a quarter of a century on. 'Salo' remains a cinematic milestone - culturally significant, politically vital and visually stunning.

Show moreShow less

In the dusty heat of the American southwest, innocent country boy Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar) is seduced by a beautiful girl (Jenny Wright) into joining a roving pack of vicious drifters, lead by the enigmatic Jesse (Lance Henriksen). But this is no ordinary band of outlaws.

Caleb is now trapped in a nightmare of soulless evil that waits in the shadows, hellish mayhem that thrives on blood; the horror that begins Near Dark.

Show moreShow less

When Marcus (Vincent Cassel) and his girlfriend Alex (Monica Bellucci) decide to go to a party with their friend Pierre (Albert Dupontel), they are totally unaware that their world is about to be torn apart in the most unimaginably brutal way possible.

Plunged headlong into a nightmarish world of darkness, where an act of extreme sexual and physical violence will serve as the spark for yet more violence, Marcus and Pierre soon discover what they themselves are capable of.

Research scientist Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) believes other states of consciousness are as real as everyday reality. Using sensory deprivation, then adding powerful, hallucinogenic drugs, he explores these altered states...and endures experiences that make madness seem a blessing.

"They're Here", playful at first...but not for long. A storm erupts, a tree attacks and little Carol Anne Freeling (Heather O'Rourke) is whisked onto a spectral void. As her family confronts horrors galore, something else is here too: a new benchmark in Hollywood ghost stories.

Show moreShow less

From the mind behind 'Evangelion' comes a hit larger than life. When a massive, gilled monster emerges from the deep and tears through the city, the government scrambles to save its citizens.

A rag-tag team of volunteers cuts through a web of red tape to uncover the monster's weakness and its mysterious ties to a foreign superpower. But time is not on their side - the greatest catastrophe to ever befall the world is about to evolve right before their very eyes.

In modern-day London, a sex criminal known as 'The Necktie Murderer' has the police on alert, and in typical Hitchcok fashion, the trail is leading to an innocent man, who must know now elude the law and prove his innocence by finding the real murderer.

Show moreShow less

Brian De Palma's inspired rock 'n' roll fusion of Faust, The Phantom of the Opera and The Picture of Dorian Gray boasts an Oscar-nominated score by Paul Williams, who also stars as an evil record producer who not only steals the work of composer/performer Winslow Leach (William Finley) but gets him

locked up in Sing Sing - and that's not the worst that happens to him along the way.
Few revenge scenarios have ever been so amply justified, but the film is also constantly aware of the satirical possibilities offered by the 1970s music industry, exemplified by Gerrit Graham's hilariously camp glam-rock star. Jessica Harper (Suspiria) appears in her first major role as the naive but ambitious singer, on whom Winslow secretly dotes.
Prodigiously inventive both musically and visually, this is one of De Palma's most entertaining romps, not least because it was so clearly a labour of love.

Show moreShow less

Deborah Kerr (in the performance of her career) plays the emotionally repressed vicar's daughter who takes up a job as a governess to two seemingly angelic orphans.

Gradually coming to believe that the children are possessed by the perverse spirits of their former governess and her sadistic lover, she begins to see manifestations of the ghosts prowling the huge gothic mansion of Bly House. Director Jack Clayton sustains a superbly haunting atmosphere throughout the film, and like James' original work, cleverly retains the ambiguity of wether the ghosts are real or the products of the governess's fevered imagination. Aided by Freddie Francis's exquisitely inventive and atmospheric CinemaScope photography, we, like the governess, are never quite sure what unspoken horrors are lurking beyond the edge of the frame and are kept guessing until the film's tragic conclusion.