In a parallel universe – the one where John Lumic creates the Cybermen, perhaps, or the one where we all wear eye-patches – the second Doctor Who serial was Anthony Coburn’s The Masters of Luxor. Script editor David Whitaker held it back for reworking, then cancelled it when the problems with Coburn’s script […]
Pop Culture
Doctor Who A-Z #01 – An Unearthly Child (1963)
Nobody comes to An Unearthly Child cold these days. The only reason anyone knows about it is bound up with what happened next: it launched a series, a series which, barring accidents, ran for the next sixty-one years and counting. Yet one of the pleasures of the opening episode is […]
The Skies of Arcadia (2000) do not speak louder than my heart
First gaming session for ‘Skies of Arcadia’ I kicked off this series of articles, to document my play-throughs of classic Dreamcast games that I’d never experienced, by explaining how I’d first purchased the console during a personal crisis. (At the tail-end of a weekend from hell in Edinburgh, as my […]
Oddity (Fantasia 2024)(Review)
A horror movie doesn’t necessarily need to be “scary” to be successful, and even then what gets under peoples’ skin is highly subjective. Describing a horror movie as “scary” can nonetheless imply its success in several areas at being able to frighten audiences, such as having a well-developed atmosphere or […]
Broken Bird (Frightfest 2024) Review
Sybil works at an undertakers. It’s a lonely job, with few perks. So she takes solace where she can. People pity the dead, but the dead are laughing in their sleep. Sybil (Rebecca Calder – House of the Dragon, Kandahar), charms her way through life, rarely straying from the societally […]
Never Have I Ever (Frightfest 2024) Review
What goes around comes around in Never Have I Ever‘s tale of domestic drama and drinking games. Sam (Andrew Lee Potts), is a struggling screen writer with a drinking habit who misses his deadlines and is low on cash. His reputation around town precedes him, and his struggles to get […]
Members Club (Frightfest 2024) Review
Genre Film Festivals are a wide parish, and some movies appear at certain events to play the field – either to find the highest bidder to launch something onto the unsuspecting masses, or they’ve already got distribution and want to build up hype before their eventual release. Other titles aren’t […]
Derelict (Frightfest 2024) Review
Derelict is a curious combination of gritty social realism and arthouse stylistics, the former coming from the locations, characters and narrative. Set, and largely filmed, in the English Midlands (but including Hereford, Manchester and London), we’re introduced (via the title card), to Abigail (Suzanne Fulton), who lives in a small […]
An Taibhse – The Ghost (Frightfest 2024) Review
The boom surrounding the Irish language has been tripping off the tongue of many audiences and critics alike for the past few years, but there’s rarely been a period for its revival like this week. The Quiet Girl and Arracht have been Gaelic triumphs for the nation over the past half-decade, and since […]
Azrael: Angel of Death (Frightfest 2024) Review
Silence is golden in horror right now. From the whole concept of A Quiet Place to a sequence in Alien: Romulus that thrives on sound levels rising no higher than a heartbeat, films are throwing themselves down a gauntlet in keeping their characters schtum to milk tension. E. L. Katz’s post-Rapture survival horror Azrael: Angel […]