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Thoughts on… Phantasm: RaVager (David Hartman, 2016)
Ok, so like the man said – I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news.To begin by getting the negatives out of the way then, let’s grit our teeth and say it straight: ‘Phantasm: RaVager’ is not, in the...
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Deathblog: Brian Aldiss (1925 – 2017)
This is a somewhat belated Deathblog I’m afraid, but I actually recently learned of the death of Brian Aldiss, who passed away last month, one day after his 92nd birthday.Although I don’t currently...
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Old New Worlds: September 1965.
To further mark the recent passing of Brian Aldiss, I thought it might be a good idea to revive my long-neglected ‘Old New Worlds’ thread [click on the ‘New Worlds’ tag below to view earlier posts] to...
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Deathblog: Harry Dean Stanton (1926-2017)
Well, so long Harry Dean.What can we say about the man that hasn’t exhaustively been said elsewhere, or that isn’t immediately made obvious through watching him on screen?The cult bit-part actor who...
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FRANCO FILES: Los Blues de la Calle Pop (1983)
During my visit to Spain last year, prior to my pilgrimage to Calpe for the inaugural instalment in the (hopefully soon to be continued) Great Jess Franco Locations Tour, I was obliged to spend several...
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October Horror Marathon:Intro.
As I have opined in these pages in past years, whenever October rolls around, as the nights draw in and we feel the chill in the air, I tend to find myself looking at other blogs and websites...
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October Horrors # 1: Werewolf of London (Stuart Walker, 1935)
During the Second World War, American studio horror films (and Universal’s efforts in particular) managed to boil themselves down into a set of formulaic clichés that have come to broadly define the...
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October Horrors #2: Creature From The Haunted Sea (Roger Corman, 1961)
Though Roger Corman is often celebrated for the prolific output and gift for last minute improvisation he demonstrated through his early years as a director, the further one digs into his catalogue,...
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October Horrors #3: Inquisition (Jacinto Molina, 1977)
Believe it or not, I’ve never really been a big fan of the whole witch hunter/tortures of the Inquisition sub-genre, in spite of the fact that I seem to have spent half my life watching examples of...
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October Horrors #4: And Now The Screaming Starts! (Roy Ward Baker, 1973)
Word of mouth regarding this late period gothic throwback from Amicus (not to be confused with Scream and Scream Again, ‘The House That Screamed’ or ‘And Soon The Darkness’) has never been terribly...
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October Horrors #5:‘The Dracula Business’(Anthony de Lotbiniere, 1974)
Originally broadcast as a Tuesday night documentary by the BBC in August 1974, ‘The Dracula Business’ is a thoroughly entertaining forty-five minutes, structured in the ever-popular “this thing...
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October Horrors #6: Santo in the Wax Museum (Alfonso Corona Blake & Manuel...
Ah, El Santo! Despite my occasional fondness for Mexican luchadore movies, it occurs to me that I’ve never actually written about any of them on this blog, so, ‘Santo en el Museo de Cera’ from 1963...
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October Horrors #7: The Undead (Roger Corman, 1957)
More bona fide Roger Corman weirdness here, with what I think must rank as by far the strangest – certainly most unconventional – film he turned in during his black & white double feature years at...
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October Horrors #8:Mania (Renato Polselli, 1974)
Until recently, this 1974 feature from the infamous Renato Polselli – director of ‘The Reincarnation of Isobel’/‘Black Magic Rites’ (1973), ‘Delirium’ (1972) and The Vampire and The Ballerina (1960) –...
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October Horrors #9: The Void (Jeremy Gillespie & Steven Kostanski, 2016)
Our token new movie for this Halloween season, and I’m sad to report that, despite a “can’t miss” outlay (heavily Carpenter-influenced action/survival horror about inter-dimensional Lovecraftian...
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Deathblog: Umberto Lenzi (1931 – 2017)
Sadly I don’t have the capacity today to pay appropriate tribute to the man who, in a weird sort of way, feels like the quintessential Italian b-movie anti-auteur, but we definitely need to put the...
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October Horrors #10: ITV Playhouse: ‘Casting the Runes’ (Lawrence Gordon...
Two years after he completed his remarkable run of ‘Ghost Stories for Christmas’ for the BBC, winning plaudits in particular for his innovative adaptations of the work of M.R. James, director Lawrence...
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October Horrors #11: The Man From Planet X (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1951)
Long on atmosphere but short on story, this weirdly compelling poverty row oddity from B-movie auteur Edgar G. Ulmer remains historically noteworthy as one of the very earliest entries in what would...
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October Horrors #12: The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (Michael Carreras, 1964)
It’s funny how, when it comes to mummy movies, the fortunes of Hammer’s entries in the sub-genre during the 1960s/70s almost exactly mirror the pattern established by Universal three decade earlier –...
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October Horrors #13: Graveyard Disturbance (Lamberto Bava, 1988)
So it occurred to me that if there is one thing missing from Halloween movie run-down thus far, it’s *’80s*.Scanning over potential viewing options for a way to rectify this, I hit upon ‘Graveyard...
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