Released to Blu-ray by the excellent Indicator label this week, The Legacy is a 1978 British-American horror mystery starring real-life couple Katherine Ross, Sam Elliott and The Who’s frontman Roger Daltrey. Ross and Elliott star as Maggie Walsh and Pete Danner, lured from their home in California to England on […]
Movies & Documentaries
Coming Home: New Hollywood’s Other Vietnam War Movie (Review)
Hal Ashby’s 1978 movie Coming Home is one of the most compelling to explore the aftermath of the Vietnam war for its veterans and their loved ones. It stars Jane Fonda as Sally Hyde, a military wife who decides to volunteer at a local military hospital when her Marine husband […]
Double Face: A Crime Drama in Giallo Clothing (Review)
I haven’t come across any Gialli films that have bored or frustrated me. Whether it is The Red Queen Kills Seven Times or Blood and Black Lace, they have strong qualities that make each film absorbing. Whether that’s eye-popping colour cinematography, a strong mixture of pulp crime and a central […]
When a Stranger Calls: the scariest phone call in horror (Review)
While up for debate, one of the most famous scenes in any of Wes Craven’s work is in Scream. Drew Barrymore deals with a man calling her again and again, ending with the question of “what is your favourite scary movie?” subsequently she is chased and offed by Ghost-face. Turns […]
A Case for a Rookie Hangman: as thoroughly bananas as the title suggests (Review)
There aren’t many literary adaptations which begin with an apology to the source author – although there are plenty that should. But Pavel Juráček’s A Case for a Rookie Hangman, reissued on Blu-Ray by Second Run, is not like most films. It begins by promising “If Swift should turn in his […]
The Night Sitter (2019) Evil Dead in the Suburbs (Review)
For any aspiring screenwriter, a tried and tested method for both selling and creating a new project is to take a film and move it somewhere else. How about Jaws in Space? or Die Hard in the white house? maybe, Evil Dead in the upper-middle-class American suburbs? That last one […]
Giant Killer Ants/Dead Ant: Creature Feature vs Tom Arnold’s bad jokes (Review)
With this new Frightfest Presents title, Dead Ant, the plight of the creature feature came to mind. They were responsible for an entire generation getting interested in things that plant their roots in the genre spectrum, I count myself among them. Being such a slave to trends as it is, […]
John Woo: Last Hurrah for Chivalry & Hand of Death (Review)
Near the end of Hand of Death, a band of brothers come together and hatch a plan to finally defeat their adversary, a traitor to our hero’s Shaolin brotherhood. Playing the least substantial parts in this four-person crew are a young Jackie Chan and John Woo, self-inserted as a scholar […]
The Captor: True Crime a la Blumhouse (Review)
The last time Ethan Hawke played a role as flamboyantly as he does in Robert Budreau’s new film, he was playing a character named “Jolly the Pimp” in a Luc Besson space opera. Hawke’s Kaj Hansson is a stetsoned, Bob Dylan-obsessed ball of energy from the moment he walks into […]
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne: Rediscovering a Hidden Handmade Gem (Review)
Belfast-born Brian Moore’s novel The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne was published in 1955 after his relocation to Canada. The sympathetic, yet deeply unflinching study of a lonely middle-aged spinster succumbing to alcoholism, a loss of faith and a mental breakdown was not an easy sell; it was rejected by […]