Whenever I grow tired of recent trends in movies I usually end up wallowing in the dumpsters of Horror history to find the trash and treasures of years gone by. One of the great joys of being an amateur cinephile is in continually delving deeper and deeper into the wonders of the past and never really seeing bottom. Sometimes you find a one-off gem, other times you find an entire sub-genre that yields dozens of unsung titles.

It probably goes without saying that the internet has made the hunt a lot easier. One of the most memorable aspects of my initial forays into Horror’s forgotten past is the Gray Market trade, where movies both obscure and discarded are scooped up and sold without an official release. Here were the true dregs of exploitation cinema, titles I would never find anywhere outside of a shadowy circle of aficionados.

As more people get higher bandwidth, this market has begun to venture out of tape trading and burnt dvds and into direct downloads. Case in point, Cosmic Hex, fine purveyors of rare and sleazy cinematic oddities. They have so may titles I’ve never heard of that, like some kind of born-again virgin of the grindhouse set, I feel as if I’m once again on the threshold of that journey into the bizarre. Don’t believe me? Here’s just a sampling.

Caltiki, the Immortal Monster, Cut-Throats Nine, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Planet of Horrors, Shriek of the Mutilated, Werewolf of Woodstock, Fantômas, Infra-Man, Yeti: The Giant of the 20th Century, Yor, the Hunter from the Future, just to name a small sampling.

First time’s free if you sign up. It took less than half-an-hour for me to download The Headless Eyes, and I plan on snagging a few more. If you decide to give them a spin, please do me a favour and tell them thehorrorblog sent you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 9:07 pm and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.