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Horror Express: The Vampire’s Ghost (Lesley Selander, 1945)
I had a lot of fun with Lesley Selander’s The Catman of Paris earlier this month, so thought I’d make some time (only 58 minutes required) to check in on the other b-horror he directed for Republic...
View ArticleHappy Halloween!
I hope you’re all having a good one out there. And so, yeah, sadly I didn’t manage to get as many posts up here this season as I’d hoped to - but I hope readers got something out of the ones which did...
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Lovecraft on Film: Suitable Flesh (Joe Lynch, 2023)
“..the place of utter blasphemy, the unholy pit where the black realm begins and the watcher guards the gate… I saw a shaggoth - it changed shape… I can’t stand it… I won’t stand it… I’ll kill her if...
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Lovecraft on Film Appendum: The Evil Clergyman (Charles Band, 1987 / 2012)
As anyone familiar with his work will be aware, H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Evil Clergyman’ is a brief, half-formed fragment, obviously written in haste, perhaps extrapolated from a bad dream, and presumably...
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TOP TEN DISCOVERIES: 2023 (Part # 1 of 2)
Well, cards on the table - 2023 was not exactly a great year, on either a personal level, a global level, or I daresay on many of the myriad levels found somewhere in-between. But, mustn’t grumble,...
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TOP TEN DISCOVERIES: 2023 (Part # 2 of 2)
With apologies for the delay… 5. Je t’aime moi non plus (Serge Gainsbourg, 1976) Venturing out to a cinema screening of this one, in honour of the late Jane Birkin, mid-way through 2023, my first...
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New Movies Round-up # 1: Big Movies.
Looking back, it seems I began 2023 with a rare round-up of ‘new’ movies I’d seen recently, and… things seem to be going that way for 2024 too, so why don’t we make a Jan/Feb tradition of it? The first...
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New Movies Round Up # 2:Horror.
Sea Fever (Neasa Hardiman, 2019)As far as niche sub-genres go, sea-bound eco/survival horror is generally a good bet, and this modest, primarily Irish indie production takes a pretty convincing shot at...
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Deathblog: Roger Corman (1926-2024)
(A flyer for a series of Corman screenings which I picked up in Tokyo circa 2011.) Yes, I know that he had a great run, that he lived a long and rewarding life, and that ‘celebration’ rather than...
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Cormania: Viking Women & The Sea Serpent (Roger Corman, 1957)
...or, as the storybook style title card has it, ‘The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent’. A big name for what is, by anyone’s estimation, a fairly minor...
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Cormania: The Intruder (Roger Corman, 1962)
Though not quite the overlooked masterpiece it is sometimes hailed as, this unique entry in Roger Corman’s filmography - a rare and impassioned excursion into the treacherous realm we would today call...
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Cormania: Gas-s-s-s! Or, It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to...
If we were to chart Roger Corman’s engagement with socio-political issues in his work upon some kind of hypothetical scale, then at the opposite end of it from the uncomfortably effective The Intruder,...
View ArticleOctober Horrors 2024: Intro.
Ok, several days late and several dollars short this year, but I mean… I couldn’t just let this blog fade away into the digital void with a snarky hatchet job on a Roger Corman film at the top of the...
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October Horrors #1: Circus of Horrors (Sidney Hayers, 1960)
Released, I believe, one year prior to Franju’s definitive ‘Les Yeux Sans Visage’, this early outlier in the ever-popular field of plastic surgery / facial reconstruction-themed horror differs slightly...
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October Horrors #2: X… The Unknown (Leslie Norman, 1956)
One strand I want to try to work into my horror marathon this October involves filling in a few gaps re: films I really should have seen by now, but for some reason have not. Given that I’m a big fan...
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October Horrors # 3: Hammer House of Horror: Visitor From The Grave (Peter...
In spite of a solid pedigree connecting it back to Hammer’s theatrical era (director Sasdy, plus a script by Tony Hinds under his John Elder pseudonym), this 11th episode of ‘Hammer House of Horrors’...
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October Horrors # 4: Sexo Sangriento (Manuel Esteba, 1981)
As the foundations of Franco’s fascist regime in Spain gradually disintegrated through the late 1970s following the dictator’s death, the restrictions governing on-screen content in the previously...
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October Horrors # 5: The Sex Serum of Dr Blake [aka Voodoo Heartbeat]...
Las Vegas-based filmmaker Charles Nizet’s berserk drive-in oddity ‘Help Me.. I’m Possessed!’ was one of the unexpected highlights of my 2022 October horror marathon, so naturally I was curious to check...
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October Horrors # 6: Jaani Dushman (Rajkumar Kohli, 1979)
Whilst watching this intermittently delightful Bollywood werewolf movie, I was under the impression that what I was witnessing here was a precursor to the definitive mode of masala horror film which...
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October Horrors # 7: Hammer House of Horror: The Two Faces of Evil (Alan...
The 12th, and penultimate, episode of the ‘Hammer House of Horror’ may not necessarily be the best, or most entertaining, of the series - but it is almost certainly the most unsettling, rivalled only...
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October Horrors # 8: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)
Well, speaking of doppelgangers, look what else I watched this month…There’s an awful lot to unpack in this ambitious attempt to take the Freudian conception of the unheimlich / uncanny to its ultimate...
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October Horrors # 9: Hammer House of Horror: The Mark of Satan (Don Leaver,...
And so, my three year odyssey through the corridors of the Hammer House of Horror concludes with this final, 13th episode - and, on reflection, I think we should probably compliment the series’...
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October Horrors #10: Oddity (Damian McCarthy, 2024)
I will frame this review by saying that, over the past year or so, I have watched a number of highly acclaimed / hyped new horror movies, and, sadly, have found that they all either failed to live up...
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Hammer House of Horror: Rankings & Wrap up.
If only to distract myself from the fact that the flaming jalopy which is the western world just failed to clear the chasm jump which might have kept the wheels rolling a while longer, here is a little...
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Deathblog: David Lynch (1946-2025)
Of all the obituary posts I’ve felt obliged to hastily bang out for this blog over the years, this loss is perhaps the one which has proved most difficult to process, or to find words for. When looking...
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