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October Horrors #14:The Flesh & The Fiends (John Gilling, 1960)
“THIS IS THE STORY OF LOST MEN AND LOST SOULS. IT IS A STORY OF VICE AND MURDER. WE MAKE NO APOLOGIES TO THE DEAD. IT IS ALL TRUE.”Thus reads the text super-imposed over the picturesque opening shot...
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Happy Halloween, etc.
Well, that’s that. Over 20,000 words of horror movie reviewin’ posted in thirty days, somehow fitted in alongside an extremely busy and stressful period of day-to-day life. I must be crazy. I hope...
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October Horrors Bonus Edition (#15): The Devil’s Men /‘Land of the Minotaur’...
Yes, I know it’s no longer October and Halloween has long been and gone, but - would you believe that, on the same night that I watched The Flesh & The Fiends last month, I took another random pick...
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Got Carters.
Much like the later New English Library Edgar Rice Burroughs paperbacks, collecting these Carter Brown books with the Robert McGinnis girly artwork can start to feel like assembling a pack of trading...
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Exploito All’Italiana: Five Dolls For An August Moon (Mario Bava, 1970)
Quite possibly the least celebrated of Mario Bava’s many contributions to the horror / giallo field, ‘5 Bambole per la Luna d'Agosto’, realised in Italy in March 1970, is unlikely to find a place on...
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Exploito All’Italiana: Mad Dog Killer (Sergio Grieco, 1977)
Arriving towards the tail-end of the poliziotteschi’s ‘golden age’ in October 1977, the premise of Sergio Grieco’s ‘La Belva Col Mitra’ (which google tells me this translates literally as ‘The Beast...
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Exploito All’Italiana: Night Train Murders (Aldo Lado, 1975)
In the course of writing previous reviews for this ‘Exploito All’Italiana’ thread, I’ve made frequent references to “the great Italian rip-off machine” and suchlike, but how are we supposed to respond...
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The 25 Best Films I Watched for the First Time in 2017.
Reminders of a better world, more or less.1. Belladonna of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973)Words like “astounding” and “inexplicable” don’t even begin to do justice to this one-of-a-kind motion picture,...
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Annual Report:The Sweeney / 1978.
If there’s one thing I always like to find under the tree on Christmas morn, it’s a bloody good annual, and as such, I’m happy to be able to revive the ‘Annual Report’ feature I instigated here two...
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Half Time Report: Twin Peaks: The Return(2017)
PLEASE NOTE: For the avoidance of confusion, I’ve chosen to refer to the third series of Twin Peaks aired in 2017 as “Twin Peaks: The Return”, or “Twin Peaks 2017”. The blu-ray box set sitting next to...
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Pan’s People: Villainy Unlimited by Derick Goodman (195?)
N.B. – I’m unsure whether or not this Pan edition actually dates from 1957 – only the copyright / first publication date is given. Given the Pan catalogue number (G327) I’m guessing 1959/60-ish.Since I...
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Pan’s People: The Law of The Streets by Auguste Le Breton (1959)
Staying in France, this one is also high on the ‘to read’ pile, needless to say.I haven’t been able to pin down an art credit for this cover, but there’s a sketchy/blurry/over-busy quality to it I...
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Pan’s People: Experience With Evil by John Ross Macdonald (1958)
Over the past year or so, I’ve really been getting into the work of Ross Macdonald (he soon dropped the ‘John’, for whatever reason). Coming on as if Raymond Chandler had knocked the...
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Pan’s People: The Little White God by Edwin Brock (1965)
After Paris and L.A., we move to the more familiar environs of South London, circa 1965.I love the Times quote on the front. (For the uninitiated – Z Cars.)Edwin Brock (1927-1997) was primarily known...
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Pan’s People: The Saint Sees it Through by Leslie Charteris (1962)
…and finally, our whistle-stop tour of Pan’s dawn-of-the-‘60s crime list brings us to ‘mad’ Manhattan in the company of ol’ Simon Templar.As far as perennial series characters go, I must confess I’ve...
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Concluding thoughts on... Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)
(Poster by Cristiano Siqueira.)Note to readers:Having now completed my viewing of 2017’s ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’, this is a follow up to my earlier post from January, in which I pre-emptively offered...
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Exploito All’Italiana: Syndicate Sadists (Umberto Lenzi, 1975)
Despite its lurid English release title – and despite the fact that director Lenzi was responsible for several of the more savage entries in the poliziotteschi canon – ‘Il Giustiziere Sfida la Città’...
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Exploito All’Italiana: Delirium: The Photos of Gioia (Lamberto Bava, 1987)
As a lover of the irrational in cinema, it saddens me to report that one of the most delirious things about this late period giallo opus from Lamberto Bava is probably its name. First off, this...
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Bloody NEL: The Making of Tania: The Patty Hearst Story by David Boulton (1975)
If I approached New English Library’s cash-in Patty Hearst book expecting the same kind of questionable laffs I extracted from their cash-in Manson book, disappointment was soon the result. Perhaps...
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Bloody NEL: Time and Timothy Grenville by Terry Greenhough (1976)
Is it possible to imagine a book that would look more at home on my shelves than this one? Or, you know that uneasy sensation you get when you suddenly start to feel like a ‘target audience’?Terry...
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