I’m based in a little town called St Helens in Merseyside and, as regular readers of my reviews here at The Geek Show will know, that has made me ideally placed to be something of a local correspondent and champion of the increasingly exciting and steadily growing filmmaking community in […]
Mark Cunliffe
Senior Contributor
Mark's first cinematic experience was watching the Cannon and Ball vehicle, The Boys in Blue. He hasn't looked back since. Hailing from Lancashire, he is an occasional contributor to Arrow DVD, writing booklet inlay essays on a variety of titles, including Children of Men and The Day of the Jackal. He has also written a chapter for Ste Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence's book, Scarred For Life Vol II. He is often found on Letterboxd, has appeared on the Talking Pictures podcast and also writes for We Are Cult, Horrified and America's left-leaning news outlet ZNetwork. He is also a regular contributor to the Geek Show's podcasts, including Pop Screen and the Uncut series.
Convoy (1978) Peckinpah Takes a Surprising Route from Novelty Record to Box Office Smash
Have you an eyeball on this, good buddy? Sam Peckinpah’s pop cultural classic road movie Convoy, starring the recently departed Kris Kristofferson, Ali McGraw and Ernest Borgnine, is coming to Blu-ray on the StudioCanal label from 28th October, 10-4! For those of you who weren’t around during the days of […]
Haunted Ulster Live (2023) Ghostwatch… with Laughs (Review)
Arriving just in time for Halloween this year, Haunted Ulster Live is another addition to the horror subgenre that can perhaps best be described as “fake live Halloween broadcast”. Late Night with the Devil earned plenty of plaudits earlier this year, and back in 2018 Inside Number 9‘s Dead Line […]
We Still Kill the Old Way (1967) An Enigmatic Tale of Crime and Corruption (Review)
Released on Blu-ray by Radiance is yet another slice of classic crime drama from Italian cinema – Elio Petri’s 1967 movie We Still Kill the Old Way, starring Gian Maria Volonté and Irene Papas. The film is an adaptation by Ugo Pirro of the 1966 novel To Each His Own […]
The Severed Sun (Fantastic Fest 2024)
Ever since I first clapped eyes on his 2018 short The Sermon, I’ve been assiduously following the work of Cornish based filmmaker Dean Puckett for the last five years. A folk horror tale about a homophobic church community living in rural isolation, the short was imbued with a wonderful 1970s aesthetic […]
Nothing But The Best (1964) A Blackly Satirical Second Cousin of the Kitchen Sink Movie (Review)
Released on Blu-ray by Studio Canal’s Vintage Classics label this week is Nothing But the Best, a rather undervalued and little seen black comedy from 1964 that stars Alan Bates. An adaptation by Frederic Raphael of a short story by American mystery writer Stanley Ellin, the film is directed by […]
Mississippi Mermaid (1969): Truffaut’s Misunderstood Tale of Mystery and Erotic Obsession (Review)
Released to Blu-ray by Radiance Films this week is Mississippi Mermaid, a 1969 Hitchcockian thriller from François Truffaut that tells of an obsessive love affair between Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve. By the late 1960s, Truffaut had long since earnt his spurs as an acclaimed auteur within the French New […]
The Landlord (1970) Raising Laughs and Awareness not Rent (Review)
Released by Radiance this week is The Landlord, Hal Ashby’s 1970 directorial debut. As a movie, The Landlord may have some of the rough edges of a first effort, but it also has the distinctive offbeat talent and approach that the inimitable Ashby would bring to his successive ventures. Specifically […]
Soldier Blue (1970): Vietnam Allegory Via Violent Revisionist Western (Review)
“I saw the bodies of those lying there cut all to pieces, worse mutilated than any I ever saw before; the women cut all to pieces … With knives; scalped; their brains knocked out; children two or three months old; all ages lying there, from sucking infants up to warriors […]
Rose (2022): Sofie Gråbøl Shines in this Study of Schizophrenia (Review)
Made in 2022, the Danish film Rose has finally made its long-anticipated way to our shores, becoming available in select cinemas and on demand from Friday, June 28th. The popularity of Danish or Scandinavian film and television has risen in recent years, thanks to their many crime dramas that continue […]