With the news of the worldwide release of Doctor Sleep, Stephen King’s belated sequel to his classic novel The Shining, comes the terrifying prospect of the author covering the same old ground yet again. Worthy follow-up or not, it’s pretty unlikely it’ll be quite as bad as his latest TV mini-series adaptation, Bag of Bones.

Pick any classic horror movie from the ‘70s or ‘80s and it’s more than likely there’s already been a horrible remake to shatter legacies and fanboys’ dreams alike.

Very few have bucked that trend (Zack Snyder’s amped-up Dawn of the Dead and Franck Khalfoun’s Maniac come to mind); the latest of these reboots is one of the most beloved films of the video nasty era, Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead. On which side of the coin will this one land?

You can usually tell a horror film reviewer from the slightly wretched, overwhelmingly weary look they carry off.

Medieval zombie flicks, eh? Other than the obvious (Ash fighting against the Army of Darkness in Sam Raimi’s trilogy finale), most would be hard-pressed to name anything like a good example.

In terms of superstar horror movie icons, it’d be fairly safe to say that they just don’t make them like they used to.

To hammer (or Hammer) home the point, this summer sees the release of a whole host of classics (and a few duds) from the annals of time, starring some of the all-time greats, including the likes of Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing.

The name Michael Madsen these days sadly conjures up horrible images of Celebrity Big Brother rather than Reservoir Dogs. Film-wise, the erstwhile Mr Blonde starred in last year’s SyFy monster-fest Piranhaconda and now tops the bill in iffy zombie pic Infection Z.

For want of a less tenuous way to link some of this month’s films, let’s call this first of two June horror blogs Part I of a two-parter focusing on the faded careers of once-stellar individuals now slumming it at the lower end of the Hollywood scale.

What with the lingering prospect of an extended winter in place of the British summer and ever-more media coverage of UKIP gremlin Nigel Farage’s awful visage, things are getting decidedly dark. Still, in this wretched modern world, we can be thankful for the simple things in life.

As we’re starting to learn, these are invariably provided by Arrow DVD, who this month continue their glorious project of restoring and re-releasing the back catalogue of Italian hero Mario Bava.

Now we’re finally in the month of bank holidays, some actual sun and the promise of long evenings and warm days, it’s about time you started planning for the summer spent indoors watching gloomy horror movies.

It seems every single classic (or not so classic) horror movie from the ‘70s and ‘80s is getting its own remake lately.

It’s a little surprising, then, that it’s taken so long for the profit-hungry executives to get round to milking the Evil Dead franchise for all its worth. By all accounts a lot more serious than Sam Raimi’s slapstick-gore original, it’s fitting that Evil Dead 2, the series’ high-point, gets a re-release on DVD and Blu-ray to coincide with the new movie’s arrival in UK cinemas.