Empire International Pictures was a movie studio and distribution outfit founded by American B-movie mogul Charles “Charlie” Band in 1983. Even if you haven’t heard of Empire, there’s a good chance you’ll have heard of some of their genre film output, and perhaps even watched some of it – during […]
Robyn Adams
Robyn Adams is an actress from Stockport, Greater Manchester, who spends a lot of her time watching horror films, feeding the pigeons in her garden, and being annoying on Twitter. She has previously written for Ghouls Magazine, hosted a panel talk on LGBTQ+ representation in horror in partnership with Forward Stockport and Grimmfest, and been a guest on numerous genre film podcasts. Her friends don't trust her to pick films on movie nights anymore.
From Hollywood To Heaven (III)(1971-77) (Review) Part Two – Ron Ormond’s Bogus Journey
Continuing on our journey From Hollywood to Heaven, we must first take the road through The Burning Hell (1974), with the Reverend Estus Pirkle as our Dante, Ron Ormond our Virgil, and The Neon Demon (2016) director Nicholas Winding Refn still ever-present for some as-of-yet indiscernible reason. The Ormond family’s […]
From Hollywood To Heaven (III)(1971-77) (Review) Part One – All Ormonds Go to Heaven
Can a born-again Christian really become an exploitation movie superstar? Picture, if you will, one Ron Ormond, a Louisiana-born screenwriter, author, magician, showman and, most relevant to the subject of this review, director of motion pictures. If you’ve heard that name before, it may be because Ormond was a rather […]
Repulsion (1965) Jeanne Dielman for the beat ‘60s with a supremely knotty director in tow (Review)
Before we begin, I feel as though my review must be prefaced with a trigger warning; Repulsion is not exactly light viewing. As you may know, Repulsion was directed by the Academy Award-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski, a man whose directorial back-catalogue contains some of the most celebrated examples of the […]
Creeping Horror (1933-46)Perfect Marathon for Enthusiasts of Classic Horror (Review)
Not all monsters are supernatural in origin, nor do they always have fangs and claws. Many would (fairly) assume that Hollywood wasn’t ready to accept that idea until audiences saw Janet Leigh get sliced up in a motel shower in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Still, in reality, filmmakers were already depicting […]
Kids Vs Aliens (2022)The perfect gateway horror fodder for 13-year-olds (Review)
A group of young boys let loose with a video camera, a forbidden house party whilst the parents are away, the arrival of malicious extraterrestrial kidnappers… if the premise of cult genre filmmaker Jason Eisener’s latest, Kids vs. Aliens, sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because he was also the […]
Julia Scott: Funny That Way (2020) Nothing short of fantastic for both the familiar and unfamiliar (Review)
For those of you who don’t know, the 31st of March marked Transgender Day of Visibility, a worldwide event first observed in 2009 which celebrates trans and non-binary individuals, in addition to helping raise awareness of anti-trans discrimination. I suppose there’s no better day that Bohemia Media and playwright Susan […]
The Perpetrators (BFI Flare 2023) bite-sized cinematic rumination on depictions of queerness and villainy (Review)
The Perpetrators is a ghost story. This is likely obvious to anybody familiar with the film’s concept, with its lead character being a pre-pubescent phantom, but beyond that, this 14-minute short is a tale of the collective ghosts of a queer past, ones which still continue to haunt the LGBTQ+ […]
The House that Screamed (1969)Messy Spanish Proto-slasher almost saved by a ghoulish, genius finale (Review)
If Spanish horror was a man, his name would be Narciso Ibáñez Serrador. Known as “Chicho” by fans, Serrador brought stories of the thrilling and chilling to Spain’s television screens for almost three decades with his popular anthology series Tales to Keep You Awake – though, to international viewers, he’s […]
DotCom for Murder (2002) Dial M for Mastorakis (Review)
The advent of the internet, as with all great advancements in communication technology, brought with it myriad new ways for nefarious individuals to find and lure in their unsuspecting victims. Those of you who, like me, have grown up in the digital age will undoubtedly be all-too-familiar with how the […]