Clik here to view.
Kaiju Notes: Godzilla Raids Again (Motoyoshi Oda, 1955)
FEATURING:Godzilla!Anguirus!1. Ok, so first off – that English language title. It’s always really annoyed me. Ostensibly I suppose, it must have been intended to be read as a lazy pun on the “…rides...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Noir Diary # 7: Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)
“I was just a lad, nearly twenty twoNeither good nor bad, just a kid like youAnd now I'm lost, too late to pray…”- Hank Williams, ‘Lost Highway’ (1949)If the canonical ‘A List’ of ‘40s Film Noir is...
View ArticleTOMORROW.
If you’re reading this and you’re a UK citizen, I’m sure you know what you have to do tomorrow, and I’m sure you’ve already been bombarded with this ‘advice’ from a hundred different sources, but what...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Deathblog: Peter Fonda (1940 – 2019)
As you might imagine, I was very sad to hear of the death of Peter Fonda this weekend.Whilst many of the mainstream obits will likely begin and end with ‘Easy Rider’, those of us with a more, uh,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Best First Time Viewings: 2019 (part # 1 of 3)
Well, it goes without saying I suppose that 2019 has once again been – in the parlance of our times - a bit of a shitter, even for those of us lucky enough to live in parts of the world not subject to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Best First Time Viewings: 2019 (part # 2 of 3)
11. Don (Chandra Barot, 1978)Nearly five years after I first cracked the spine of Todd Stadtman’s essential Funky Bollywood: The Wild World of 1970s Indian Action Cinema, I finally found at least a few...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Best First Time Viewings: 2019 (part # 3 of 3)
I’m sorry that the final part of this list has taken so long to complete; time was short over the festive season, and, as will soon become clear, I soon realised I had quite a lot I needed to say about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Deathblog: Jô Shishido (1933–2020)
It’s sad to have to kick off this year’s blog posts with an obituary, but we must of course take some time here to pay tribute to the great Jô Shishido, one of the most distinctive and charismatic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kaiju Notes: Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster (Ishirō Honda, 1964)
FEATURING:Godzilla!Rodan!Mothra (larval form only)!King Ghidorah!BORING EXPLANATORY NOTE:I’m aware that ‘Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster’ is the fifth film to feature Godzilla, whereas this is only...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Noir Diary # 8: Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959)
So here’s a question for you: when did Film Noir – in its original, American iteration - end?Many fans and critics understandably regard Orson Welles’ masterful ‘Touch of Evil’ (released in April 1958)...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kaiju Notes: Invasion of Astro-Monster (Ishirô Honda, 1965)
FEATURING:Godzilla!Rodan!King Ghidorah!1.The sixth film to feature Godzilla, 1965’s ‘Kaijû Daisensô’ [‘War of the Monsters’], known to English speaking viewers as ‘Godzilla vs Monster Zero’ or, as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Deathblog: José Mojica Marins (1936 – 2020)
And so, we bid farewell to José Mojica Marins, aka Zé do Caixão, aka Coffin Joe, who departed this life aged 83 on February 19th in São Paulo, presumably still cursing god and mocking the pathetic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lovecraft on Film: Reanimator (1985) and the Great ‘70s Lovecraft Drought....
I.“While he was with me, the wonder and diabolism of his experiments fascinated me utterly, and I was his closest companion. Now that he is gone and the spell is broken, the actual fear is greater....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lovecraft on Film: Re-animator (1985) and the Great ‘70s Lovecraft Drought....
III.“I must say Dr. Hill, I'm very disappointed in you. You steal the secret of life and death, and here you are trysting with a bubble-headed co-ed. You're not even a second-rate scientist!”- Herbert...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lovecraft on Film Appendum: Two Panthers.
For reasons outlined in my previous post, I‘m unable to show off any vintage Lovecraft paperbacks which include ‘Herbert West: Reanimator’ amongst their contents, so failing that, now seems as good a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Random Paperbacks: The Alley God by Philip José Farmer (Sphere, 1970)
More so perhaps than any other classic-era science fiction author, Philip José Farmer’s work seems to have inspired a wealth of extraordinary and unusual paperback cover art across the decades, with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Deathblog: Stuart Gordon (1947-2020)
Yesterday morning, I received the terrible news that Stuart Gordon, whose classic debut feature ‘Re-animator’ we were discussing on the blog just a few weeks ago, has passed away at the age of 72.There...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kaiju Notes: Ebirah, Terror of the Deep (Jun Fukuda, 1966)
FEATURING:Godzilla!Ebirah!Mothra!Some kind of mangy prehistoric bird thing!1. As I’ve previously observed in these posts, the success of a kaiju movie often depends upon the presence of a good human...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Noir Diary # 9: Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmak, 1944)
Before he went on to establish himself as one of the directors most closely associated with the ‘noir’ aesthetic via ‘The Killers’ (1946), ‘Criss-Cross’ (1948) and ‘Cry of the City’ (1949), German...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Deathblog: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi (1938-2020)
As a belated tribute to director Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, who passed away last week, here are a set of screengrabs taken, not from his astounding debut feature ‘House’ (1977), but from 1981’s lesser known...
View Article