Anthology horror films have a surprisingly long legacy, with the first one, Unheimliche Geschichten, being traced back to 1919. Arguably, Dead of Night from 1945 popularised the genre before the boom in the 60s and 70s, the latter of which had its own Dead of Night that went direct to […]
Mike Leitch
I'm an autistic guy living in Cardiff, searching for any excuse to write and make the most out of what he got from his English Literature MA. Main interests are horror, in pretty much any medium, theatre and literature.
Mad God (2022): A Beautiful Collage of Sickening Horror (Blu-Ray Review)
Mad God is a film that is easy to recommend since it has something for everyone: it is a stop motion animation; an ambitious personal project over thirty years in the making; a gross horror film; a shining example of pure visual storytelling; a particularly squelchy take on dystopia; and […]
When The Screaming Starts (2021): A Mockumentary on a Killer Subject (VOD Review)
Premiering at Frightfest last year as part of their First Blood strand, Conor Boru’s When the Screaming Starts is finally released on digital platforms through Signature Entertainment. Boru co-wrote the script with Ed Hartland, who also stars as Aidan, an aspiring serial killer who becomes the subject of a documentary […]
Hellbender (2022): Feel the Chaos of a Teenage Witch (Blu-Ray Review)
Hellbender is the sixth feature film from the Adams family (made up of Toby Poser, John Adams and Zelda Adams) and their third in the horror genre. Following its release on Shudder in February, it arrives on DVD and digital through Acorn Media International making it their most readily available […]
Memoria (2021): An Elegy For the Future (Blu-ray Review)
The American distribution by Neon of Memoria attempted to create a never-ending release whereby it would play at a single cinema for one night only and then move on to another one. At the time of writing, this process is still more or less in place, but evidently, the pandemic […]
Universal Terror: A Collection of Comforting Karloff Cinema (1937/1944/1952)(Blu-ray Review)
It cannot be overstated how much Boris Karloff’s performance in Frankenstein deserves its iconic status. The physicality and emotional expressiveness he brings to the Monster still have emotional resonance and rightly made Karloff a star. However, he had already been acting for over a decade by this point and Frankenstein […]
The Initiation of Sarah (1978): Psychic Sister Doing It For Herself (Blu-Ray Review)
There’s a discussion to be had about how the age of streaming has either destroyed the concept of a made-for-television movie or revived it. Either way, The Initiation of Sarah shows its age as a nearly forty-five-year-old broadcast for television while being exactly the sort of film you could stumble […]
Lux Aeterna (2019): Gaspar Noé’s Stress-Inducing Meditation On Filmmaking
Arrow’s new release of Lux Aternae, Gasper Noé’s 2019 fifty-minute film, on Blu-ray and also on Arrow Player and in June comes as his latest film, Vortex made immediately after Lux Aternae, hits UK cinemas and his films forming the centrepiece of the recent New French Extremity season at BFI […]
The Phantom of the Monastery (1934); A Well Preserved Piece of Mexican Film History (Review)
In a world premiere on Blu-Ray, Indicator has released a restoration of Mexican horror The Phantom of the Monastery / El Fantasma del Convento from 1934. It follows a group of three lost on a walk who meets a mysterious man and his dog, Shadow, who leads them to the […]
One Night in Miami (2021) A Conversation with History (Review)
Originally released on Amazon Prime Video and cinemas back in January 2021, Regina King’s feature-length debut One Night in Miami, an adaptation of Kemp Powers’ 2013 play of the same name, who also wrote the screenplay, closed out the year with a Criterion Collection DVD and Blu-ray release in December. […]