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It’s almost time, dear readers! Halloween is nearly upon us, and we have one last batch of killer Blu-ray and DVD releases to get us ready for All Hallows’ Eve this week. One of the best films of 2018—Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy —arrives on both formats this Tuesday, courtesy of Rlje Films, and both Slender Man and Our House come home as well. The Matrix Trilogy is getting a much-deserved 4K treatment from Warner Bros., and a series that I really enjoyed back in the day—Chillers, hosted by Anthony Perkins—is headed to DVD, and I’m so excited to get the opportunity to finally revisit it.

Cult film fans will definitely want to pick up a copy of the Special Edition of Torso from Arrow Video, and Vinegar Syndrome is doing the Dark Lord’s work with a quartet of releases they have on tap as well, including The Incubus,...

42 – Nosferatu: The First Vampire

Directed by F.W. Murnau

1922 – Germany

The earliest surviving film based on Dracula is Nosferatu, an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel. One of the first vampire movies, it is perhaps on one of the best vampire movies ever made. Generally creepy from beginning to the last frame.

41- Spirits Of The Dead (Histoires extraordinaires)

Directed by

Federico Fellini (segment Toby Dammit)

Louis Malle (segment William Wilson)

Roger Vadim (segment Metzengerstein)

1968 – France

First thing to notice is the three directors: Federico Fellini, Louis Malle and Roger Vadim. Second you need to take notice in the cast which includes Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda, Peter Fonda, Alain Delon, Terence Stamp, Salvo Randone, James Robertson Justice, Françoise Prévost and Marlène Alexandre. Spirits Of The Dead is an adaptation of three Edgar Allan Poe stories that amount to one mixed bad, but with one incredible segment that needs to be seen.

Michael Redgrave in the "The Ventriloquist's Dummy" segment in Dead of Night (top); Gene Tierney in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Dragonwyck (middle); Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (bottom) Turner Classic Movies' horror/mystery/suspense Halloween marathon kicks off this evening with a showing of the 1945 British classic Dead of Night, which, 65 years later, remains one of the best efforts in the psychological-horror genre. Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti ("Christmas Party" and "The Ventriloquist's Dummy"), Charles Crichton ("Golfing Story"), Basil Dearden ("Hearse Driver" and "Linking Narrative"), and Robert Hamer ("The Haunted Mirror"), Dead of Night stars a number of top players of British film and stage, among them Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Basil Radford, Sally Ann Howes, and, best of all, Michael Redgrave as an unbalanced ventriloquist. Also this evening, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, a sumptuous David O. Selznick production starring a flawless Joan Fontaine as "I" de...

William A. Fraker was a leading cinematographer in films from the late 1960s, photographing such films as Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and the 1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic. He earned six Academy Award nominations during his career for his work on Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), the fantasy classic Heaven Can Wait (1978) starring Warren Beatty, Steven Spielberg’s 1941 (1979), WarGames (1983), and Murphy’s Romance (1985).

Fraker was born in Los Angeles on September 29, 1923 and served in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during World War II. He studied at the USC School of Cinema and worked as a photographer’s assistant. He began working as a camera operator for television in the early 1960s. He served as a cinematographer for the obscure television production The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre (a.k.a. The Haunted) (1964) for director Joseph Stefano, and for Leslie Steven’s off-beat, Esperanto-language horror film Incubus (1965) starring William Shatner.