Jose Lifante Movies

Long known for his stylish and terrifying werewolf films, Spanish actor/director Paul Naschy takes terror to a whole new level in this dark tale of an out-of-work actor's harrowing decent into madness and murder. His glory days long behind him, forgotten film star Pablo Thevenet (Naschy) bitterly resents the lavish attention heaped upon the film industry's latest generation of youthful and photogenic up-and-comers. When audition callbacks yield deafening silence, the destitute Thevenet is forced to accept a humiliating job as a doorman and entertainer at the mysterious Pandora Club. His performances as some of history's most notorious murderers -- including Jack the Ripper and Giles de Ray, among others -- prove increasingly disturbing as fantasy slowly bleeds into reality, and it isn't long before the disillusioned has-been is extracting bloody revenge on those he feels have hindered his late-career comeback. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Previously filmed in 1922 with Rudolph Valentino and in 1940 with Tyrone Power, Vicente Blasco Ibanez's mystical bullfight novel Blood & Sand was given a third big-screen treatment in 1989. Though filmed in Spain by a Spanish director, the 1989 Blood & Sand casts American actor Christopher Rydell as the bullfighter hero. Also hailing from the USA is a pre-Basic Instinct Sharon Stone, playing the vamp role previously essayed in 1922 by Nita Naldi and in 1940 by Rita Hayworth. The story remains the same: a dirt-poor youth rises to fame and fortune in the bull ring, forgets his roots, cheats on his wife, has a last-minute change of heart, and pays for his sins in grotesque fashion. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A young married couple living in Madrid decide to go their separate ways, a decision brought on by the person who moves into the apartment next to them. The jealous husband leaves his wife and takes up an apartment in another section of the building, taking some of the furniture with him when he goes. But the prospects for divorce alter as the film heads toward its conclusion, in a series of unexpected events. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

When state officials test out a new experimental pest-control device that uses subsonic waves to kill insects, it produces an unwelcome but interesting side-effect: the noise is enough to wake the dead -- literally -- and the corpses of the recently deceased begin to rise from their dirt-naps with ravenous appetites for warm human flesh. Since the predicted zombie jubilee starts off with more than a whimper than a bang (actually it's more of a wheeze, since these are particularly asthmatic undead), viewers are left with a rather mundane police drama as clueless detectives try to pin the mutilation murders on a group of free-wheeling hippies. Despite high production values and some audacious gore effects by Giannetto De Rossi (who would later lend his splattery talents to Lucio Fulci's Zombie and many more Italian zombie films), this Spanish/Italian co-production falters in the middle thanks to sluggish pacing and dull investigation scenes, which are devoid of suspense since the zombies' existence is already made known. Also released under the quaint title Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue, among others. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi