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DARKEST NIGHT: The Ninth Annual Stereo Sanctity / Breakfast in the Ruins...
Cross-posted with Stereo Sanctity.Hopefully arriving with sufficient notice for you to fully absorb it as you set about cultivating appropriate state of mind prior to next week’s big night, I’m afraid...
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Belated Deathblog: Ted V. Mikels (1929 – 2016)
Last Friday night, my wife and I re-watched Ted V. Mikels’ ‘The Astro-Zombies’ (1968) in tribute to the great man, who passed away a few weeks ago. Back in 2010, I rated this my 20th favourite horror...
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Before we move on with routine business here, it behoves me to throw down a quick line on yesterday’s US election results.Groan all you like, but to be honest I’ve always felt frustrated by the...
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Belated Plug: Nucleus Films Euro-CultRestoration Project.
Well, for the moment at least, life goes on, and another blogging responsibility that slipped through the cracks during this Halloween season and its ugly aftermath is the necessity of my telling you...
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Exploito All’Italiana: Spasmo (Umberto Lenzi, 1974)
Well, my Exploito All’Italiana season earlier this year may have stalled after three measly reviews, but my concerted attempts to watch and write about as many horror movies as possible during October...
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Exploito All’Italiana: Manhattan Baby (Lucio Fulci, 1982)
(These Thai posters are great, aren’t they?)It occurred to me recently that, despite counting myself as more-or-less of a fan of Lucio Fulci’s horror movies, I had never actually taken the time to...
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Exploito All’Italiana: Blazing Magnum / ‘Strange Shadows in an Empty Room’...
Shot in Ottawa, Canada with a largely American cast, ‘Blazing Magnum’ is one of those latter-day Italian co-productions that tries so hard to hide its Italian origins that viewers coming to it blind...
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Some thoughts on… The Witch(Robert Eggers, 2016)
Arriving in my household this December on the back of a veritable avalanche of critical adulation (a major studio distributed horror film won “best director” at Sundance? Really?), Robert Eggers’...
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Sorry.
As regular readers may have noted, I have not posted any new content here for over one month. I'm sorry about that. The reasons are, unfortunately, simple: my plans for posts over the festive period...
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Top Twenty First Time Viewings for 2016.
I greatly enjoyed doing this last year, so, with further apologies for the protracted delay in getting it to you, here is a run-down of what I consider the twenty best films I watched for the first...
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Random Hardbacks: Cutlass Empire by F. van Wyck Mason (Jarrolds, year unknown...
As I have probably mentioned here before, there is a tradition in the area in which I live that sees people, apparently unable or unwilling to pay a visit to the charity shop of their choice, leaving...
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A Forgotten Euro-Gothic Double-Bill: ‘Tomb of Torture’ and‘Cave of the Living...
This month, I’ve been busy reading Jonathan Rigby’s new book ‘Euro Gothic’ – a fairly self-explanatory follow up to the author’s previous surveys of British and American horror - and enjoying it...
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Deathblog: Seijun Suzuki (1923 – 2017)
It goes without saying that I was very sad this week to hear of the death of one of my favourite Japanese filmmakers – a man whose work I believe exemplifies all the values I would wish this blog to...
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Nikkatsu Trailer Theatre # 5: WE SELL OUR BODIES BUT NOT OUR SOULS!
Well if my gushing praise in last week’s Seijun Suzuki memorial post wasn’t enough to sell you on 1964’s ‘Gate of Flesh’, perhaps the typically hyperbolic outpourings of Nikkastu’s trailer department...
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Shell Shock: Gat Heat by Richard S. Prather (Four-Square/NEL, 1968)
Until recently, I’d never read a novel by Richard S. Prather all the way through, yet I own more of his books than most authors I actually like. Don’t ask me why – I mean, usually even the cover art...
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Deathblog: Tomas Milian (1933 – 2017)
We at Breakfast In The Ruins were greatly saddened today to hear of the death of Tomas Milian, the Cuban-born actor whose unforgettable, off-the-leash performances enlivened dozens of Italian movies...
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Some Notes on ‘Vampyr’ (1931) as an Ur-Text for the European horror film.
NOTE TO REGULAR READERS:I’m afraid to report that I have recently become rather fixated on Carl Dreyer’s ‘Vampyr’ – so much so in fact that I have spent an inordinate amount of time banging out the...
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Cinema Trips: Free Fire (Ben Wheatley, 2017)
In spite of all the plaudits director Ben Wheatley has received since his disturbing kitchen sink/crime/horror mash-up ‘Kill List’ first put his name on people’s lips in 2011, I must admit that I felt...
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200% Cotton.
(Penguin, 1974 / Cover by Paul May / John Claridge)(Dell, date unknown [presumably 1970] / artwork taken from the movie poster by Robert McGinnis.)Normally, I’d try to avoid putting two copies of the...
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Soul Pulp: Superspade # 2: Black is Beautiful by B.B. Johnson (Paperback...
As our previous post here touched upon the sparks that flew when the aesthetic of the early ‘70s ‘black action film’ hit the literary world, I thought I might as well pull a few choice volumes off the...
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